suspense

THE NEXT TIME I DIE by JASON STARR

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The Next Time I Die
(Hard Case Crime Series #154)
By Jason Starr
Hard Case Crime (Titan Books) — June 2022
ISBN: 9781789099515 — Paperback — 256 pp.

Hard Case Crime has been on quite a roll with their releases of late, and this new novel by Jason Starr generated all sorts of positive buzz up through its release this past month. All those great reviews are warranted, The Next Time I Die is an imaginative creation of literary depth and irresistible diversion. It’s a novel that should appeal to fans of both crime and speculative fiction genres, while also gratifying readers of contemporary general fiction that don’t normally dip into genre pools.

“I saw you, Steven Blitz”

With these words spoken by an unknown male voice, as stab to the gut, and a fade to black for the protagonist at the close of chapter one, the wild ride of The Next Time I Die truly begins.

Before: Lawyer Steven Blitz is busily working to prepare defense for a high profile serial killer murder trial that should help launch his career to the next level. His agitated wife comes in to interrupt him, demanding a divorce and ordering him to get out of the house. She declares she can no longer stand him, and has never really loved him. She has been having an affair with her best friend and wants him and their stagnant marriage gone from her life.

After trying to talk more with her, Steven reluctantly does leave, gathering his work and making a call to his brother saying he’s headed over and needs to crash at his place. En route there amid a winter night’s storm, Steven swerves at a turn in the road to avoid sliding into a collision, and safely continues on. During a quick stopover at a store to pick up some things, Steven witnesses a man and woman having an argument in the parking lot. When the woman’s safety seems threatened, Steven chooses to step in.

A painful stab to Steven’s stomach, his vision going dim, and that mysterious unknown voice coming from the void, nowhere, somewhere.

Expecting to be dead, Steven instead finds himself regaining consciousness in a hospital. Only he quickly realizes things are not right. The nurses and doctors know nothing of any attack in a parking lot. There is no knife wound. Steven was injured in a car crash, hitting a tree while sliding on an icy, snowy stretch of the highway.

Even more strangely, Steven’s wife is there, rushing to his side, full of concern and affection. And with her is their little daughter, a child Steven has no recognition of, but who is worried about her father. The news on the television makes no mention of the growing coronavirus concerns, or fiascos from the dangerous fool who’s occupying the White House. Instead the anchors seem to be concerned about conflicts in India/Pakistan, and how President Gore will be handling things.

As Steven comes to accept the insanity of what seems to have occurred he tries to figure out how it did and when divergences of timelines from his memory and the reality he now finds himself amid must have started. He also quickly realizes he has to pretend all is fine and he’s not confused, lest they keep him in the hospital over worries of unknown neurological problems – or perhaps side-effects of the cancer Steven has recently been treated for. A cancer Steven has no memory of.

While trying to make sense of the turned about reality he faces, Steven finds some things might be nicer in this new life. He has a devoted and loving wife that he finds a recaptured attraction to. He positively adores his wonderful daughter. And here he is already a big time lawyer – a partner in the firm he had been working for on a lower rung, with a hefty bank account and life style that no longer needs a flashy defense trial of questionable morality.

But also, Steven begins to uncover some darker facts about the new found timeline. In this world, the artist serial killer he had been defending walks free, unsuspected of any crimes. Though, Steven knows better. And much to his shock, Steven finds that in this reality, he was the asshole, cheating on his wife and getting into troubles with repercussions that ignorant (and innocent) Steven must now deal with.

Starr’s crisp writing and the mysterious nature of what the protagonist faces both help propel the reader through The Next Time I Die with exceptional pacing and investment in Steven’s hapless situation and character, simply wanting to do good and find success.

And therein lies the brilliance of Starr’s novel: what makes a person good? The fantastical premise of the novel is not something Starr sets out to explain. Is this jumping multiverses? Are there really multiple versions of him that have swapped? Is the start of the novel all in Steven’s head? Or is the rest? Is someone doing this to Steven? None of the answers to these kinds of questions are what is at heart here.

Whatever its cause, whatever its nature, this ineffable phenomena is a means for Steven to discover the totality of his human moral potential, what he is at the core, or can be. Or looking from the outside perspective of author and reader, an exploration of the character of a character and the degrees to which the ambiguous possibilities and gray areas lie in us all.

From the very start of the novel, Starr paints his protagonist as someone with tremendous sincerity for virtue in himself, a preoccupation with proving his merit to himself and others. Like Linus in the pumpkin patch proclaiming righteousness while also adopting humbleness, Steven trumpets his inherent goodness with dogmatic earnestness, to others and in rationalizations to himself.

His wife’s emotional antagonism that sets off the novel is not his fault, and he’s big enough to respect it’s not really hers either. She’s simply off her meds, not speaking or thinking rationally. This is something they can work out – even if she is having an affair – because he’s willing to work things out with her, after all. Defending a serial killer with a pleas of insanity, though he knows in his heart him guilty of heinous acts and deep seeded psychological problems is okay, because the man will still be kept off the streets and be offered help, and it’ll give Steven a chance to do more and better work in defending other clients who really are innocent.

Upon the discovery of things prior Steven has done in the new timeline reality he awakens in, Steven sets out to do all he can to make better decisions than his predecessor. Cut off affairs and stop doing things that a ‘good guy’ would do. However, he wasn’t responsible for those things previous Steven did, so there shouldn’t be any negative consequences for him in this new life. He’s good and will do better.

Starr weaves a brilliant story here drawing parallels between Steven’s personality and that of the serial killer, showing what people might be capable of, lies that might be told to oneself, versions of oneself that might be created to keep an image in one’s mind to live with. As more falls apart for Steven in this new found life, is that okay still? After all, there may be an infinite multiverse of Stevens and decisions out there. If things come apart here, there’s always another version to try better at the next time I die.

The Next Time I Die is a chilling novel for what it shows through its protagonist and from the fact that Starr is offering no answers here as readers consider personal choices and possibilities of a lifetime spent inherently trying to be good, but also knowing selfish deviations from that have occurred aplenty. It’s a brutal, honest portrayal of human nature, though without going full on into nihilism. Though not a new theme to literature or other artistic forms, Starr’s approach to it here is freshly conceived and captivating.

Next up from Hard Case Crime arrives in September: The Hot Beat by Robert Silverberg. Look for a review of that up here just prior to its release.

THE TURNOUT by Megan Abbott

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The Turnout
By Megan Abbott
Knopf Publishing Group — May 2022
ISBN: 9780593084922 — Paperback — 368 pp.

First released last August, but only recently out in paperback, The Turnout is the tenth novel from Megan Abbott, a popular suspense/crime writer whose work typically focuses on female perspectives. I have always heard good buzz around her novels, and I even have a couple sitting on my shelf that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet.

This solidly constructed thriller affirms why Abbott’s work has been bestselling and award winning. The Turnout is propelled forward by a simplicity of suspense and atmosphere that make it immanently readable. Furthermore, the familiarity of everyday characters and seemingly mundane conflicts of work and family form a curtain of universal relatability for readers. Beyond that curtain lie secrets and crimes that Abbott allows poke out: dark, uncanny shivers and susurrations amid everyday life. With plotting and language she deftly builds suspense up to the shattering revelations of the novel’s climax.

Sisters Dara and Marie oversee the prestigious Durant School of Dance, an institution of ballet they inherited after the tragic death of their parents in a car accident. Dara’s husband Charlie works alongside the sisters. Once their mother’s prized student, who spent life growing up with the sisters as an adopted part of the Durant family, Charlie’s ballet talent buckled to injury. Now, the trio work fluidly in an intimate choreography of instruction, molding a new generation of dancers into ballet artists.

The clockwork precision and smoothness of the professional and personal lives of this trio becomes unbalanced when Marie suddenly decides to move out of the familial Durant home and crash at the dance studio, away from Dara and Charlie. Then, just as the school begins its preparation for their annual crowning performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, a fire breaks out from a space heater Marie has been using. Though firefighters save most of the school, extensive repairs become necessary just when the school is busiest and the family is most stressed.

From word-of-mouth recommendation, Dara hires a construction remodeler to repair the damage. Though relieved to see the team gets to quick work, Dara becomes increasingly concerned by the odd behavior and comments of the lead remodeler, Derek, who has seemingly enchanted Marie into an alarming relationship of sexual passion and psychological control. Strange accidents and setbacks to the repair begin to occur, and Dara begins to fear that Derek is not just further fragmenting the Durant family, but has his eyes set on much more.

One of the things that Abbott does very well is to convey the harsh, painful toll of ballet on the dancer’s body, from the feet on up. Dara repeatedly echoes the voice of her mother in encouraging and glorifying the torment and self sacrifice given by children for their art. It’s a bitter truth that any success involves struggle and pain, contortions and wounds. Something like that physically embodies this. Abbot takes this dark idea and runs with it, showing the manipulation of students by mentors that parallel the bodily manipulations of muscle and skeleton in the ballet dancer. The title of the novel refers to this specifically: the turnout, where a dancer achieves full 180-degree rotation of their feet to jut at a right angle from front, a physical achievement requiring contortions of the hip to manipulate human anatomy into atypical forms.

These themes of physical manipulation and pain center into the dynamics of all the character relationships, and the plot of The Turnout. The family strife, the histories of past trauma kept hidden, and the toxic agenda of Derek: these all echo the tolls taken by ballet for excellence. The difference, however lies in the questions of what one demands from (and gives of), oneself, versus what others selfishly take. That distinction is key, particular in the example of protagonist Dara, who is quite willing to endure pain for the sake or her art and things she controls, but refuses to bear it for others.

As the protagonist and point-of-view for the novel, Dara represents the most complex and developed character. It’s a shame that Abbott doesn’t put the same intricacy into the others. To an extent she has little choice. We can’t know the thoughts of others, and to reveal more depth in many would ruin the suspense or reveal truths prematurely. However, I do think that Marie could have been more of a focus for development and insight.

Despite the darkness of its plot elements, The Turnout is a pleasure read, an engaging thriller that doesn’t require much beyond reading and enjoying. Dara’s voice of growing confusion and fear lend a shadowy atmosphere where the reality of what faces her becomes obscured amid her assumptions and suppressed memories. This creates a perfect mood for suspense fans to enjoy, and I look forward to reading more of what she has written.

CALL ME A CAB by Donald E. Westlake

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Call Me a Cab
(Hard Case Crime Series #152)
By Donald E. Westlake
Hard Case Crime (Titan Books) — 1st February 2022
ISBN: 9781789098181 — Paperback — 256 pp.

An easy-going New York City cab driver named Tom picks up a fare for JFK airport who seems anxious and out-of-sorts. Engaging in some small talk with her, Tom learns her name is Katherine and that she is headed to the airport to fly to California to give her longtime fiancé Barry a final decision in person on the marriage. She has hesitated on fully committing to the union; though he has been patient, he has now given her an ultimatum. If only she had more time to just think, to figure out the source of her indecisiveness, and find a confident answer within her heart.

Katherine asks Tom what the cost would be to drive her to California in the cab. This would give her time to calm her panic and figure things out in isolation. She has the money; Tom has the time; an arrangement is made. Their journey begins. Along the way a close friendship builds between Tom and Katherine through their conversations and the events that go along their journey across country. They learn things about one another, and themselves. Ultimately, Katherine finds her answer.

Call Me a Cab has an exceptionally simple plot, with two simple characters. But, the interactions between Tom and Katherine are fascinating and refreshing, with flowing language from Westlake that probes psychology and human emotions with humor, playfulness, and respect.

It’s arguable that the novel doesn’t fit into the Hard Case Crime press mission or genre fold. However, I don’t remotely care, and I don’t imagine any other fans of the HCC series would either. Unlike all the other Westlake titles in the HCC library, Call Me a Cab has no crime in it at all, nor really any mystery. It does contain the element of suspense, but it’s a romantic suspense, a suspense of two characters who gradually share more of a bond making efforts to not consummate feelings of attraction they may begin to feel, because of Katherine’s relationship with Barry and because of her vulnerability in a state of uncertainty and confusion at figuring out herself. Interestingly, grappling to suppress and comprehend her friendship with Tom leads her to eventually realize the source of her hesitance with Barry.

I feel as though this is a really hard novel to review or write about, particularly with details because of its simplicity. It’s probably best if I simply wrap it up by stressing how satisfying Westlake’s deliberate and elegant prose is to read here. The reader falls into companionship with Tom and Katherine and those who have fun ‘shipping’ fictional characters who have that connection that feels so perfect, will adore this too.

Westlake wrote Call Me a Cab, it seems, as an exercise in telling a caper story without a caper. I would say that equally it is a romance story without any physical romance. With offerings like this, I’ll always support HCC willingness to stray a bit from their usual fare.

QUARRY’S BLOOD by Max Allan Collins

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Quarry’s Blood
(Quarry Series #16)
(Hard Case Crime Series #151)
By Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crime (Titan Books) — 22nd February 2022
ISBN: 9781789096682 — Paperback — 224 pp.

Quarry’s Blood is a quick and satisfying pulp read, with Collins infusing his latest novel with fresh blood (yes, bad pun groan) to invigorate the aging Quarry series. I first saw this title in the Hard Case Crime catalog and thought, oh dear, another Quarry novel? And then I was even more confused to see that it was set in 2021, well after the events of The Last Quarry, which had been meant as the chronologically final story of the former contract killer’s life. I read how HCC editor Charles Ardai talked Collins into writing this entry, read the novel, and then was very glad that Ardai succeeded.

If, perchance, you haven’t read a Quarry novel, or if you haven’t seen any of the brief Cinemax series based on the series, here’s the gist of the character. A Vietnam veteran trained as a sniper, the man later dubbed Quarry returned home after the war to find his wife had been cheating on him with another man. Quarry killed that man, but circumstances led to him legally getting off from the crime, and to be recruited as a hitman for a powerful ‘Broker’ with mob connections, a man in charge of delegating regional contract killings. The Broker names his talented new recruit “Quarry” for the man’s rock solid appearance and hollow emotional core, and Quarry quickly becomes one of his best hitmen. Until the Broker begins to worry about Quarry and betrays him. Quarry goes rogue and takes care of the problem, procuring a list of jobs in the process. Quarry begins to go to people on the hit list and offer his services to get rid of the contract killers after them, and then also to try and find out who ordered that hit and take them out too. As he ages, he eventually settles for one last job with a big payout; he ends up with retirement with a woman he loves.

In Quarry’s Blood, the former hitman is still living the quiet, retired life, mourning the recent loss of his wife to COVID, but continuing his daily routine as he approaches seventy years old. This calm routine changes when a true crime writer, Susan Breedlove, arrives knocking at his door with questions. Susan has written a best-selling book that investigated and exposed many events from Quarry’s past, including what occurred with the Broker, and she is looking to write more, with more details and the hope of cooperation from Quarry, the man she knows far more about than anyone should. Even more disturbingly, soon after her visit, a contract killer and his backup make an attempt on Quarry’s life. It’s reasonable to Quarry to assume these two events are connected.

There are two things to the aptly titled Quarry’s Blood that make it succeed in terms of its plot. First, it is now a case where Quarry is the contract. He has to both protect himself from being killed, while also investigating to try and figure out who would want him dead and how it relates to Susan’s book/research. And, though he is in remarkable shape for his age, he is certainly not in top form for the kind of exertion that investigation might entail. Second, is the character of Susan: who she is and how that relates to Quarry and his past. The person who put out the hit on Quarry, and their secret reasons for doing so also pull from the core of Quarry’s past and nicely parallel his relation to Susan.

It probably wouldn’t be too much of a spoiler to be more detailed, but I’m going to opt for keeping it all a surprise. The novel begins with three chapters set in the 1980’s, so that by the time we get to the present and Susan arrives, things should already be clear to readers. Thankfully Collins doesn’t take too long to dance around things either, leaving the real mystery of the novel to who is targeting Quarry – and even moreover why.

Collins’ writing is exactly what one would expect from this master of neo-pulp. The text and dialogue flow crisply, with bits of playful trashiness one would expect from the genre. The novel is also preceded by some quotations, one of which is a definition for ‘meta’. Indeed, there are many self-referential nods in Quarry’s Blood, including mention of the TV series and the idea that Quarry himself writes the pulp Quarry series that everyone thinks is fiction.

Collins clearly has fun writing this unexpected chapter in Quarry’s story, and he succeeds in making it unique enough from previous entries to warrant its telling. Susan is an impressive addition to the series, and I could see things continuing in spin-off series featuring her. In fact, I hope Ardai pushes strongly for that.

THE INSECT FARM, by Stuart Prebble

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The Insect Farm
By Stuart Prebble
Mulholland Books – 7th July 2015
ISBN 9780316337366 – 320 Pages – Hardcover
Source: Goodreads’ First-Reads

A foul odor is noticeably growing, emanating from a shed and attracting the attention and concern of neighbors. The police are called in. Within they discover an elaborate insect farm and the remains of two people, picked to the bones.
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So begins Stuart Prebble’s The Insect Farm, the English author’s first novel published in the US. After the grisly discoveries of the novel’s prologue, the story begins from the point of view of elderly Jonathan Maguire: an everyday, normal kind of fellow who is writing down past recollections of his family and life. Jonathan hints at some significant event compelling him to relate this past, an event – figures the reader – related to the mysterious bodies discovered in the prologue.
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 For all his his life, Jonathan has been close to his older brother Roger. Loving and protective of one another, the Maguire brothers have a normal childhood. But as Jonathan begins to grow into young adulthood, he begins to notice that Roger’s mind has remained in adolescence. Roger’s mental disabilities and related social insufficiencies leave him in a relatively simple, but happy, life of reliance on his brother and their parents. While Jonathan starts to get an interest in girls, Roger develops an interest in insects, starting an insect farm in the yard shed as a hobby.
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As Jonathan begins to focus more on his studies and a relationship with his attractive girlfriend Harriet, circumstances force him into greater responsibility for caring for Roger, whose insect farm has grown into a beloved obsession. But Jonathan’s commitment to caring for Roger limits the time he has with his now-wife Harriet, the only woman in a small musical ensemble that works long-distance. Only seeing Harriet during the weekends, Jonathan lives in constant jealousy that his stunning bride is away with a bunch of other men, one of whom makes no secret of his desires for Harriet.
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Two brothers with different sorts of obsessions and dependencies: one with mental/social defects and eccentricities the other with near-stifling responsibility and pangs of resentment. A wife away with a man who fancies her. One can imagine that things can go wrong with such tension. But what will happen exactly? And which of these characters correspond to the two skeletons that end up with the insects in the shed?
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There lies the mystery and suspense of The Insect Farm. It’s important to stress to potential readers that these genre tensions do not form the bulk of the story. Prebble’s novel is somewhat hard to characterize and it is easy to go into this expecting one type of story only to be disappointed that you’re getting something else. This isn’t a thriller with some cat-and-mouse chase toward discovery of identities. It isn’t about fulfillment of justice for a crime. The resolution to the prologue of The Insect Farm will not be revealed until the reader completes the last page, and there will be some surprise twists right before the final, appropriately subtle, one.
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But it takes a lot of text to get to this point of revelation. The majority of that text (3/4 of the novel roughly) is taken up with the rather everyday family drama of the characters. It thus more closely resembles a contemporary ‘literary’ piece of fiction than something from the mystery or thriller genre. At it’s heart, it may be more aptly described as psychological suspense, heavy on the psychology. The psychology of the Maguire brothers is the meat of The Insect Farm, most particularly that of the point-of-view narrator Jonathan. And Jonathan is not a particularly likable person. I have no issues with needing characters in fiction to be likable, but I know some readers do. For me, this is what makes The Insect Farm an actually interesting piece of fiction.  To what degree is Jonathan selfish? How honest is his devotion to his brother? How alike are these two brothers? Does Roger have greater understanding and capability than one might at first think? What moral culpability does Roger have for social transgressions given his mental development?
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The characters here – including Harriet – may not be likable, but they are interesting. They are people whose motivations aren’t always clear-cut, but they do have them. These complex motivations, and the psychology of characters’ decisions are the elements a reader can focus on here, forming questions and opinions that can be debated with other readers. People who appreciate this type of thing will find a lot to love in Prebble’s novel. But if you don’t want to get into the character’s minds – or don’t care to – then you will likely get rapidly bored as a seemingly normal mix of human dysfunction ‘drags on’ until finally turning to crisis and fall-out management in the last quarter of the book. For me, the character details that lead up to that end point were largely worth reading.
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Disclaimer: I received a free advanced reading copy of this from the publisher via Goodreads’ First-Reads giveaway program in exchange for an honest review.

Déjà Vu, by Ian Hocking

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Déjà Vu, by Ian Hocking
(The Saskia Brandt Series #1)
Publisher: Unsung Stories
ISBN: 9781907389221
312 pages, eBook
Published: 30th June 2014
(Originally Published 2005)
Source: NetGalley
 It is the near future. European detective Saskia Brandt arrives with a foggy mind, despite a vacation, back into her office where she discovers the corpse of her receptionist. With all evidence pointing to her as the killer, Saskia is given mere hours to find a way to clear her name. This seemingly impossible task opens a door of revelation to Saskia, indicating that her identity, purpose, and past may not be what she now believes.
In the meantime, academic scientist David Proctor receives a strange visiter and message from his inventor daughter drawing him back to a research site where his wife died decades prior in a bizarre explosion. Accused of that explosion, but having no memory of it, Brandt travels in flight from European agents, including Saskia.
Shrouded in uncertain identity and memory, the pasts of Saskia and David mix together with their present and future in Déjà Vu, a self-described technothriller that mashes up science fiction and crime thriller genre tropes.
The opening chapters of the novel caught my attention, and Saskia Brandt and her predicament in this book regarding her identity and uncertain past hold a great deal of potential. The shift in narrative to Proctor was therefore a bit jarring, for the remainder of the novel remained on this protagonist. This is especially unfortunate because he isn’t a particularly fascinating or likable character. Also it ends up negating the potential of Saskia, who the series is named after. The female protagonist ends up never having any self-definition. Instead she remains something created and manipulated, within the story as much as by the writer. By the time she returns to the novel after the chapters of focus on David, her purpose becomes fully tied to David’s, and there she basically remains.
Beyond disappointing with the wasted potential of a strong female character, Déjà Vu, doesn’t find any other way to significantly impress either. It is not a bad novel; it’s just rather ordinary. Nothing in the plot is particularly novel in terms of technology or twist. The mystery of how the various plot strands come together between past and future of course involves time travel, again not something new to science fiction. Here though time travel is kept to strict rules of causality, so that if something happened in the past, it will happen in the future. No exception.
So, if you try to shoot Hitler to prevent him from rising to power, it won’t happen. The gun will jam. The bullet will fly off at a ninety-degree angle and hit a wall instead. Etc. This ends up effectively making a deus ex machina situation where the plot advances simply because that is how the past was written – quite literally here, by the author.
There are concepts within Déjà Vu that while done in science fiction plenty of times, could be handled anew in a fresh significant way. The start of Saskia’s story had me excited that this might be the case, but unfortunately that isn’t what the novel became. Again, Déjà Vu isn’t terrible and there are nuggets of creative quality here, that even writer Ian Watson gave it praise. But with a generic plot and characters that never became captivating or profound the work just comes across as flat.

Disclaimer: I received a free advanced electronic reading copy of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ice Shear, by M.P. Cooley

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Ice Shear, by M.P. Cooley
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN: 0062300709
320 pages, hardcover
Expected Publication: 22nd July 2014
Source: Goodreads First-Reads

This is a very impressive debut genre novel that I didn’t expect to enjoy quite so much. My initial expectations were somewhat low because so many of the elements of “Ice Shear” I would describe with the word ‘average’. The plot is suitably complex. The writing is straight-forward, though very descriptive, with realistically rendered dialogue. The protagonist seems like a regular woman. The pace is constant and the small town setting is well-rendered.

Together this makes an enjoyable police procedural read, a novel that is really good, but where nothing really screams out as being exceptionally unique, innovative, controversial, or profoundly insightful. So what sets it apart from any other mystery novel out there is it is so ‘average’? Why in my heart do I feel like this is a really successful novel that was well-worth reading?

I think the answer to those questions lie in just how effectively Cooley manages to take the ordinary and produce a tight, well-crafted mystery out of it where everything does feel satisfying without becoming dull and mundane. Most impressive to me is Cooley’s protagonist June, a former FBI-agent returned to her hometown to serve on the police force. June is deceptively simple, one of the most realistically rendered female characters I’ve come across. Here strengths and weakness are given subtly, and her personality is one of straight-forward perseverance, simply being a good investigator and human being. Relatable and likable, she is flawed and challenged, but she overcomes and the reader enjoys the experience of seeing how she does so.

Cooley also manages to put in just the right amount of ‘outside’ information and personal conflict outside of the main crime plot thread. You learn a bit about June’s past and her family and professional relationships, but readers aren’t pulled too far down any side-tracks that don’t have bearings on the novel itself. This leaves Cooley room to further develop the character in future novels, hopefully just as effectively.

Four Stars out of Five

The Sound of Broken Glass, by Deborah Crombie

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The Sound of Broken Glass,
by Deborah Crombie
Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James Series Book 15
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN: 0061990647
384 pages, hardcover
Published February 2014
Source: Goodreads First-Reads

Normally I don’t sign up to win books that are in a series because I try to use this to discover authors and works that I otherwise wouldn’t discover or read anytime soon. So if it’s a series, I probably haven’t read any of the others. Even if novels are supposed to be ‘stand-alone’ I’d much rather read them all, in order, or not bother reading any of them. This makes getting into mystery novels hard though. So I must’ve read the description for this and decided my interest was worth giving it a try. I’m glad that I did because it was an enjoyable book, but I’m not sure if it is a series that I’d rush to find more of over the others I have in queue.

The primary strength I see in “The Sound of Broken Glass” is atmosphere. Crombie’s characters each exude particular British regions or classes, and the city itself is used almost as a character in defining the roles of the others, their pasts and how those circumstances now collide in the present. These past events are conveyed through italicized, flashback, passages, rather than in-time. This method seems largely employed to keep the secrets of the mystery hidden to the investigators in the novel until the last possible moment. The reader therefore has a greater, though still very vague sense, of what lies behind the murders than the protagonist does. Yet despite revealing more to the reader, Crombie still keeps the mystery unsolved and identities unclear through red-herrings, convolutions, and reader mis-assumptions.

Thus, it stands an effective mystery. The downside as I saw it, was that the structure of the novel with its flashbacks takes away significantly from any procedural aspects. The case is ultimately unveiled not completely through the investigator’s skill, but rather in large part due to chance coincidences and shared acquaintances, well-crafted connections on the part of the author between her characters that leave the entire events partially artificial in feeling. Crombie also uses the story and its themes to try to wedge in side plots involving the protagonist and her family, all of which seem highly tangential and never actually brought to conclusion. I suspect these aspects of the story relate more to the overall series as opposed to the novel itself, highlighting that a series novel never can really be ‘stand-alone’.

Three Stars out of Five

Silent City, by Alex Segura

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Silent City, by Alex Segura
Publisher: Codorus Press
ISBN: 0983978360
160 pages, paperback
Published October 2013
Source: Goodreads First-Reads

There are some aspects of “Silent City” that work well for a detective mystery. Foremost is the setting. Murder and Miami spring “Dexter” to mind immediately, colors and vibrance of a shiny city. The Miami here goes beyond that cliché to something darker. The novel is also economical in its writing, scenes are not wasted, and the story stays moving at a good pace through a short read. Moments of inaction (particularly the start) are helped in that Segura creates an interesting protagonist in Pete Fernandez, a man lost in depression, digging his life into a deeper hole, a very unwilling and naive detective.

The problems with “Silent City” ironically stem from some of these potential strengths above. Pete Fernandez is interesting because he is such an ordinary guy, not your typical detective. This is a nice change from the witty, brilliant, and generally lovable hard-boiled detectives of noir. But without that ‘performance’ from a witty protagonist, a Marlowe or a Spenser, there needs to be something else to really make the novel captivating or enjoyable. For “Silent City” there just isn’t. It’s economical in construction, but thereby becomes very standard and predictable. Nothing comes as a surprise. Fernandez is so ordinary that he becomes dull, so clueless that the reader figures things out well before Pete happens to stumble upon the truth. He is so hapless that it simply stretches disbelief to breaking that he wouldn’t be executed by the killer almost immediately.

The setting, culture, and language of Segura’s debut novel are great, but “Silent City” is missing any element to really set it out as a noteworthy mystery or thriller, the sole novelty of its protagonist sadly dissolving with nothing to support it into the predictable plot, becoming a bland paste.

Two Stars out of Five

The Wrong Quarry, by Max Allan Collins

/ Daniel Haeusser / 2 Comments
17797436The Wrong Quarry, by Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crime #114 (Quarry Book 11)
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
ISBN: 1781162662
221 pages, paperback
Published January 2014
Source: Goodreads First-Reads

I’ve read a few of the Quarry novels featured in the Hard Case Crime series and they are always a hard-boiled pleasure. Rich pulp at its finest, Quarry is a captivating antihero despite his predictable qualities of a good conscious down deep, a pride in his work, and that weakness for women. Coupling his wit with sleazy, sinister characters up to no good, you have all the ingredients for a good noir.

Compared to other books in the series what is enjoyably unique about this one is just how far off course the character of Quarry is driven by being fooled into losing sight of who the bad guys are, and the truth behind the situation in which he find himself. Knowing that our protagonist assassin is on the trail of the ‘wrong quarry’ ruins the surprise of the existence of this final twist in the novel, however the interesting aspect for the reader switches from being about the existence of the twist to more about how Quarry is being fooled.

Overall another great entry into the Hard Case Crime series, a novel that takes retro pulp trashiness and delivers a pure little guilty pleasure for fans of the genre.

Five Stars out of Five