I've had The Eighth Circle by Stanley Ellin on my shelves for
almost two decades. I'm not sure why I never got around to
reading it. It had come highly recommended at the time I
bought it and I had seen other praise for it in the
intervening years. I'm also not quite sure why I finally
picked it up and read it, but I'm sure glad I did.
This is a masterful book. There is a nice plot, but it is the
characterization that makes it so distinctive. The characters
are are developed well beyond the strict needs of pushing the
plot forward. They have backstories and lives outside of the
PI agency where they work
(the agency is also nicely filled out, with day-to-day
business beyond the job at the core of the book). As a matter
of fact, characters are so well-drawn that in those couple of
instances where plot-point becomes somewhat obvious, when you
see more than the detective does, it is also obvious why the
detective is blind to it. As a matter of fact, the book is as
much about the how and why of Murray Kirk's blinders as it is
about the case at hand. Highly recommended.
So, what else did Stanley Ellin write? Is it as good as this
one?
Mark
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