Jennifer Marsh is back with her reporter boyfriend. This time, her elder friend Emmie Walker is in trouble: Jennifer finds her standing next to the dead body of Edgar Walker, with the murder weapon in her hand.
What I Liked
The rambling around by all of the characters is great. As usual, Jennifer’s writing group throw themselves in to help her investigate all the goings-on at Edgar’s Down Home Grill, complete with a special sauce that may be to-die-for.
What I Didn’t Like
The storyline jumps around a bit in time at the start. It might have read a lot better in normal linear fashion rather than the resulting stilted jumping. It’s only the first few chapters though, so it doesn’t overly hurt the story.
Disclosure
I am not personal friends with the author, but I have interacted with them briefly on social media.
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.
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.
A body is found with the letter “P” carved into its forehead. P stands for pawn, and it is dumped in upper Manhattan, using the streets as a chessboard. The Knight and Bishop follow. And the chess game begins.
Inspector Regal has been chosen by the killer to play the game, which he does through moves placed in the New York Times. As long as the game is interesting, no more bodies. But Regal is not a very good chess player, the game becomes dull for the killer, and another body appears. But Regal has an ace in the hole: a retired master player named Billy Abbott who left the chess world behind and disappeared before it took over his life. Abbott tells Regal the moves to make the game interesting, and for a while, he does — even turning the game around and winning. But having Regal win the game is not the object of the killer who targets Regal personally.
A series of sub-plots involve a cop working for Regal who had been killed during the line of duty while hunting down Panamanian drug runners, and a female cop who loved him and wants justice; a political side with Regal butting heads with his departmental rival who is in charge of both investigations; and a personal side, with Regal suspecting his wife of having an affair with a power mogul. This is the second “Dev Strkyer” novel, a nom-de-plume for Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran.
What I Liked
I love Murphy and Cochran’s work, and this one is no exception. Well-written, the chess strategies are well-mixed, and the story moves along fast enough with a lot of sub-plots mixed in to keep life interesting when the bodies are on hold. Even the political manouevering is interesting. The ending, although pat, is not a typical “everybody lives happily ever after” finish.
What I Didn’t Like
The climax is too pat, and too action-oriented rather than detection-based. I knew who the killer was long before they were revealed, and I’m not even sure why the authors chose to reveal the killer when they did, other than the realization perhaps that the reader already knows by then so the mystery is really gone. The only question was when and where they were going to be caught, if at all. As well, Stryker doesn’t really play fair with the reader at the start in terms of the depiction of the killer, but I still figured it out before the end despite the intentional misdirection.
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.
