Easy Rawlins lives in L.A., 1948. He’s a black war veteran who just lost his job for mouthing off to the boss. Then a man comes along with an easy proposition: find a girl who was hanging out with the blacks at the jazz bars. While Easy needs the money to keep the little house he bought, he wants to know why the guy wants the girl found. Then he finds out others are looking too. Bodies pile up, having been worked over first, and the girl turns out to be connected to politics. While Easy finds the girl, it comes along with a lot of trouble from crooks, politicos, and cops who think he’s good for one of the murders.
What I Liked
The story moves, the characters are interesting, and the descriptions of the settings are well-written enough to give the reader the feel of each place in the story.
What I Didn’t Like
The characters may be interesting but are not well-developed. This story definitely has the feel of the pulp mystery fiction of the 50s and 60s, with lots of action, but no depth to the main characters. I never particularly cared about Easy, although I like the parameters of the character.
A mixed-tone argument that you can be “addicted” to reading and owning books, with some examples of book hoarders from years-gone-by.
What I Liked
There are some really good “humour” lists, kind of like a Letterman top ten list for:
Moving when you have a lot of books;
A Biblioholic’s test (how big is your problem);
The snobbish Discovery Index (I knew the author when..);
Reading in restaurants;
Latin explanations of literary taste: “De gustibus non est disputandum” — Everyone to their own non-disputable tastes; and,
Ten Commandments for the Book Handler.
What I Didn’t Like
The author can’t seem to decide what the book is — a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek ode to book hoarders everywhere or a serious tome about an actual mental illness. The book starts out with a light-hearted look at those who feel an overwhelming urge to buy books i.e., “biblioholics”. By the end, however, he treats it like a real mental illness that requires awareness and treatment. Either approach could work, but bouncing between one and the other wears out really fast. Perhaps this would have been better as a collection of small articles for a small newspaper, and even then, in dire need of an editor to give it better focus and less repetition. But even in a series of newspaper articles, I suspect the reader would tire of the subject matter very quickly — the metaphor is dragged out far past its prime.
Esther Breslau is a Jewish immigrant who has found a job working as a photographer in the graft-filled world of 1895 Manhattan. John Tonnerman is an honest cop, a rare commodity on a police-force filled with those on the take and in a city where your innocence depends on the size of your pocketbook. Esther takes a picture during a riot and the thugs notice and come after her. A reporter she has been working with has the plates but the thugs worry about what he knows and take matters into their own hands to silence him forever. John and Esther try to figure it all out.
What I Liked
The research was impeccable, and the epilogue is a nice touch to separate fact from fiction. The writing is first-rate and the settings are alive with the time. Each image portrays the world of the time, and the reader is transported easily with each page.
What I Didn’t Like
A couple of small nit-picky points — there are a lot of characters, which can be a problem to track in mystery stories, but they are sufficiently different here that they don’t run together as much. A few of the characters (such as the reporter) were fleshed out a little TOO much, but I’m assuming part of that was with a view to them showing up in future stories too.
Keller is a hitman. The contracts come from White Plains, from an unseen man upstairs and the man’s assistant named Dot. He gets the jobs and he does them. A pro…no mistakes. Life is good. And every time Keller goes to a new town, he gets real estate agents to show him houses he’ll never buy. Then he kills the target and goes home. And goes to therapy, gets a dog, gets a girlfriend, meets an agent from the government, and generally cruises through life piling up bodies. But there are always little problems — like the man who hires him through a front and then neglects to pay the second half. Or the two rivals who both hire Keller to kill the other and he has to choose which one. Or the three “innocents” that the government has him kill. In the end, he decides to retire. And find a hobby. And even that doesn’t work out as planned.
What I Liked
The character is interesting and business-like. He has trouble killing a man he likes because he knows the man is waiting for it and Keller had saved his grandson from drowning, so he is somewhat conflicted. And the search for explanations about his life and his past are at once both deep and superficial — deep questions that Keller can turn away from any time he wants and simply shrug. And mean it. On the lighter side, he uses various identities when he travels, identities of real people. So, just for fun, he occasionally calls the wives from the hotel he is staying in so that when the couple complains to American Express that they weren’t there, the call appears to be from them to their own home, just to mess with them. But then he feels guilty, so he sends the wife flowers from the husband – charged to the husband’s card, of course. And his depictions of some places in New York City were a nice “”homecoming”” since I was there a while ago and know all too well the places he was describing. Favourite lines:
“Keller, what difference does it make how Lyman Crowder pronounces his last name?” “I just wondered.” “Well, stick around for the funeral. See what the minister says.”
There were eight million stories in the naked city, most of them not very interesting, and he was one of them.
“He had killed a thousand miles to ride a woman he’d never met” (A deliberate misquote of a Louis L’Amour advertisement: “He rode a million miles to kill a man he’d never met”).
It was an unusual experience for him to travel under his own name and use his own credit cards. He sort of liked it, but felt exposed and vulnerable. Signing it at the restored downtown hotel, he wrote down not only his own name but his own address as well. Who heard of such a thing?
What I Didn’t Like
Some of the chapters seem somewhat disjointed, which is likely a reflection of the fact that many of the chapters appeared “as is” in magazines as short stories. The only other complaint is that in a couple of places the story jumps back to New York City a little too fast and the reader is left wondering exactly what happened and how he killed the target. Particularly for the guy who initially stiffs Keller on the second half of his fee — there is no explanation as to whether Keller kills him or not. He plans it but then has to go back to New York City suddenly. No explanation. A good set of stories overall, although it’s hard to get into the character since the character is presented as rather cold and superficial. Almost like a description of someone’s life in the past, it’s hard to feel tension or great interest in the day-to-day happenings.
Disclosure
I am not personal friends with the author, but I have interacted with them briefly on social media.
Misty Patterson has problems: an abusive domineering husband and amnesia from her childhood. And now she has a new problem: her husband gets abusive again and she conks him with an Eskimo statue, hard enough seemingly to hurt but not to kill. Then she blacks out. He’s found dead a few days later after having been hit a second time with the same statue and dumped in the lake. And Misty doesn’t know what happened. Enter her lawyer, Nina Reilly, who is newly separated from her husband, newly separated from her neat legal firm, and new to the Lake Tahoe area. And her idea of a perfect introduction to the area is NOT a high-stakes murder case where everyone thinks Misty did it. Maybe even Misty herself.
What I Liked
The Lake Tahoe community comes alive as do some of the characters — Nina, herself; Misty; and Nina’s assistant. Lots of interesting facts about the area and the impact of the lake on a dead body. Well-written, all the characters are real, and adequately developed for the story. In fact, it’s an impressive array: Nina’s ex-husband on the peripheries along with her brother, sister-in-law, and Nina’s son; Paul, her investigator who’s warm for her form; a string of Misty’s lovers and their very jealous wives and girlfriends; Misty’s parents; and a couple of doctors who are trying to help Misty remember her past. A few loose threads are left for the next story in the “series”, if it does indeed become a series. And, on the legal side, the solution is handled in an interesting courtroom finale that is not like simple Perry Mason reruns. A good beginning for “Perry O’Shaughnessy”, which is a pseudonym for two sisters: Pamela (a lawyer) and Mary O’Shaughnessy (a writer).
What I Didn’t Like
The point-of-view switches from Misty to Nina to Paul in various chapters, and the switch does not really develop Misty’s or Paul’s character enough to justify the switch. Unfortunately, I figured out the three key elements of the “mystery” before the end of the story. Didn’t expect the ending, at least not exactly, but I did expect the “baddie”. There are a couple of places where it is a little heavy on the “legal” side, interpreting case law, which is a likely result of one of the two authors being a lawyer.
