Mysteries Galore.com

Reviewed by Mary Ebert

 

Alexis has the feel of a Sam Spade novel even though it has the tech and characterizations of today’s PI novels. It just feels like Bogart is the narrator. The fuzzy feeling of being wrapped in a warm blanket drinking something old fashioned and smoothly alcoholic just pours right off the page. All this and you don’t feel like you have to go 12 step meeting after finishing it.

Perhaps what creates this feeling is that most modern PI novels end up being more buddy-type books then actual PI novels. Does Dan have help with his case, yeah! But each person has their own life and it doesn’t feel like they are waiting for Dan to need them. There is his lover who is an erotic dancer at his favorite gentleman’s club. He shares, office space and a secretary with his friend, who is also his accountant. His secretary is a little moony over him and won’t be getting the time of day from him any time soon.

On his way back from an out-of-town job he does what any hardboiled PI would, stop by the club to enjoy the scenery and have a few drinks. And that, my friends is when things start to get interesting. He picks up a job from the owner of the club. It seems one of the new girls lives in a neighborhood that the owner isn’t fond of and he wants Dan to spend a few days just checking things over. This should be nothing but a babysitting job. That is until the baby turns up missing. But wait Dan’s problems don’t stop there.

 

Dan is hired by a lawyer to follow a spouse. She wants to find out what really happens on her husband’s “boy’s night on the town.” Shockingly boy’s night ends with him alone with a beautiful young lady in her house. Isn’t that where all boys’ nights are supposed to end? Anyway getting back to the lawyer, two days after Dan hands in his findings his subject is killed by the lady he spent the evening with. That just doesn’t sit well with him.

 

What I like about this book is that it kept me confused. It’s hard for a book to do that when you read for a living. No one in the book is simple. Everyone has a flaw or three in this book and they hit you when you least expect it. After all who would expect high class business men to hang out in the neighborhood this club is in? Who would think that the owner of a strip joint would care what his girls did after work? And most of all, who would think that a hard PI would give a damn about any of it? They all do and it makes them people you actually care about.

 

 

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A review copy of this book was supplied to the reviewer by the author.