Reviewed by: Pete Barber
Genre: Crime/Noir
Approximate word count: 70,000-75,000 words
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Author:
The author is Chair of the English department at Southwest
Minnesota State University and the author of five novels including Yellow
Medicine.
Description:
After being
busted off the police force in Mississippi, Deputy Billy Lafitte is given a
second chance by his ex-wife’s brother who is sheriff of Yellow Medicine County
in Minnesota. He gets on the wrong side of some terrorists operating crack
houses on the outskirts of town.
Appraisal:
I don’t read a lot of Crime Noir, but I did enjoy the lean writing
style—lots of sentence fragments and smart-assed asides. However, I struggled
with the protagonist. He’s an easy guy to dislike, especially his attitude
toward women who he sees as sex objects open to manipulation by a person in
authority (a policeman--him). I guess there may be cops as bent as this one,
but as a character, I found it hard to root for him. And that’s a big problem
because the book is told in first person from Billy’s perspective.
The action scenes were well portrayed, although with too much gory detail
for my taste. Billy and his wannabe girlfriend, Drew, were well-drawn
characters. But the terrorist cell and the way they behaved and particularly
how they interacted with Billy, was unconvincing. A lot of time was spent
inside Billy’s head, and on occasions, the author’s politics showed through a
little too obviously.
As I said, I’m no expert on the genre, and much of what I didn’t enjoy
can be attributed to that. Crime Noir is a specific niche, and I think this is
probably a good example that would appeal to lovers of hardboiled stories.
Format/Typo Issues:
There were
a few formatting problems on my Kindle version, though not enough to cause a
distraction.
Rating: *** Three stars
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