I recently read Greg Rucka's latest, SHOOTING AT MIDNIGHT.
Rucka normally writes an excellent series about Atticus
Kodiak, a professional bodyguard. Midnight is told in the
first person from the point of view of Kodiak's estranged
girlfriend, Bridget Logan, who works for a large private
investigation firm.
You find out in the first chapter something about Logan that
you didn't know in the first 3 Kodiak books: namely, she's a
reformed junkie and she deals with "Mr. Jones" every day of
her life. The story is about her trying to prove a friend of
hers from rehab didn't kill her abusive, drug dealing
boyfriend. Early in the story, Logan takes a baseball bat to
the guy in an effort to convince him to leave her friend
alone. Apparently, the message didn't take and he ends up
dead.
I've read quite a few books lately with female protagonists.
Lehane's Patrick Kenzie is equal partners with P.I. Angie
Gennaro. Crais' DEMOLlTION ANGEL finds bomb squadder Carol
Starkey struggling with demons. Michael Connelly's VOID MOON
is about a female cat burglar trying to go straight. T.
Jefferson Parker's Merci Rayburn is an Orange County
sheriff's detective in THE BLUE HOUR and RED LIGHT. Tough
cookies all, but none of them are as badass as Bridget
Logan.
Logan struggle is such that she actually disappears in the
middle section of the book and Kodiak takes over the
narrative as he tries to find her. I certainly won't make
light of the struggle with alcoholism. But in my view, it
ain't even the same animal as Logan's struggle with Mr.
Jones.
By anybody's definition of both noir and hardboiled, this
book is both, in spades. As soon as you finish whatever you
happen to be reading, each and every one of you on the list
should pick up this book and try and put it down.
John Lau
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 24 Jul 2001 EDT