I didn't read another Gold Medal and I haven't started on a
police procedural yet, but I did have a pretty hardboiled
weekend nonetheless. Here's what I read:
Bill Pronzini. _Undercurrent_.
The third
book in the "Nameless" series (I see a new one, _Spook_, is
due in January 2003!), this book has Pronzini's detective
following a newly- wed man at the behest of his wife. It
seems the guy has been disappearing for long weekends for
some time now and she's wondering if maybe there's another
woman somewhere in the mix. The detective follows the guy to
the quiet northern California town of Cypress Bay, checks
into the same motel to keep an eye on the guy, and is the
first on the scene when the man is found stabbed in his motel
room. A number of potential suspects soon turn up, including
a struggling writer of pulp novels, one of whose books seems
to have had something to do with the murder. This was a good
book, not quite as strong as the previous installment, but a
good, old-fashioned murder mystery.
Rob Kantner. _The Back-Door Man_.
The first Ben
Perkins novel. As I read, I kept having the feeling that this
must be the third or fourth book, based on all the references
to previous cases and other characters, but maybe those were
to the series of short stories that preceded the novels.
Perkins is a tough detective in Detroit, whose main job is
handyman and security consultant for the Norwegian Wood
apartment complex. His detecting is mainly a side job and
maybe a bit of a hobby, keeping him in extra money to pay for
a classic car, an ultralight airplane, and beer and cigars.
He's called on by an old, wealthy woman who wants Ben to
recover some money she lost to a scam artist who had
disappeared many years before, but had recently resurfaced,
only to die in a plane crash. The man had bilked a number of
people and stashed his ill-gotten gains in a number of places
around town. Perkins isn't the only person after the money,
and he finds himself teaming up with a shady "detective" from
Windsor, Ontario, just across the river. The two travel
around town, tracking down the money, locked in an uneasy
partnership (Ben has the coordinates, the other guy has the
map).
I liked the
book, though as I say, I couldn't help but feel I was coming
in on the middle of the story, with all the references to
other cases and the characters that Perkins knew well but who
were new to me. Also, at a crucial point in the story,
Perkins makes a choice that struck me as just a bit too
hard-edged and lost some of my sympathy. Still, I think I'll
continue with the series.
Kris Nelscott. _A Dangerous Road_.
Now this was
a good book. _Road_ introduces black detective Smokey Dalton,
a Memphis private eye who works cases in the black parts of
town, for a number of black lawyers and others. It's 1968 and
a sanitation workers' strike is ongoing and a number of major
figures in the civil rights movement are either in town or on
their way, including Dalton's boyhood friend, Martin Luther
King. In the midst of this turmoil, Dalton is hired by a
woman from Chicago who is curious why her mother left him
$10,000 in her will. Ten years before, Dalton received a
similar, anonymous gift of $10,000, and he's curious, too.
The case takes him back to his hometown of Atlanta and
ultimately to the reason why his parents were lynched when he
was a young boy. Dalton is a great character--he's smart
(holding an MA--his foster parents wonder why he hasn't done
more with his life) and caring (he looks after a pair of
young brothers who've lost their mother to a life of
prostitution) and bothered by the turmoil around him. When he
runs into a man he knew in the army, now apparently a Black
Panther, Dalton begins to worry that there may be some
government involvement in the riots and agitation going on
around him. Ultimately, his young charge, Jimmy, witnesses
the truth behind King's assassination and the book ends with
the two of them on the run. I liked this enough that I
immediately checked out book two in the series this
morning.
Dan Simmons. _Hard Freeze_.
This is the
second Joe Kurtz novel and it was hard to put down. Kurtz is
again involved in the machinations of the crime family he
worked with in the first book. His former cell mate is
putting out hits on Kurtz, while the cell mate's sister is
working to consolidate her control of the family and to stop
another family from taking over completely. At the same time,
Kurtz is hired to find a serial rapist and killer of children
who is something of a chameleon and just happens to be posing
as a police captain and who views Kurtz as the perfect fall
guy for his latest batch of crimes. Kurtz is also watching
out for his daughter, who has barely survived a car accident
caused by her drunken guardian--a man Kurtz has threatened if
anything like this should ever happen--and who has accused
the man of attempted sexual abuse. All of this in the middle
of a cold and snowy Buffalo winter. This is a very
entertaining and fast-moving book, though it might be just a
bit too stylized. The serial killer/police captain comes
across as more of a literary creation than a real person, for
instance. But it's good to have Kurtz back, and the promise
of a third book in the series. And, at one point, Kurtz's
secretary Arlene really trashes a certain unnamed detective
who has a girlfriend and a dog that he just "loves to bits."
She says she keeps reading the series, waiting for the hero
to wake up one day and cap the girlfriend and the dog.
Craig Larson Trinidad, CO
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