Goodbye Glasgow, hello San Francisco.
I wrote (should've raved) about Cons, Scams and Grifts
recently. Typically, I got hold of 32 Cadillacs after that.
Reading them in reverse order was not a disaster, but if you
have the choice, start with 32 Cadillacs. I loved them both.
A biggish cast of characters, both detectives and crooks, but
their personalities are distinctive for the most part. As an
aside, I noticed that he used one fairly unusual repo
incident in both books.
Like miker, I've just finished Cases. I don't remember
Penny's father dying twice. We get two explanations of his
death, but both times he is said to have died before she was
born.
The whole story takes only about six months, starting with
graduation from Notre Dame and going until just after New
Year's. There are so many murders I'd have had to take notes
to remember them all. Our hero, the young detective in the
making, spends the first half of the book making his way
across the western U.S., seeking material for his writing,
and the second half learning (very fast) to be a private
detective.
The suspense was good, the characters interesting, but the
tone is quite different from that of the two DKA novels
featuring the Gypsies. Cases is about a guy getting hard
boiled. The DKA crew is a bunch of tough guys, but the two
stories are almost rollicking. In one of the intros, Gores
says that he wanted to make it fun. Cases is not fun.
I've got Dead Man and Come Morning (both subtitled "a novel
of suspense") to read in the next ten days. I'm not sure what
to expect, except good writing.
On the author's list of works is the screenplay for 32
Cadillacs. Anyone know if a movie was ever made?
Karin
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