Last night, I finished Koryta's _Tonight I Said Goodbye_,
which won the St. Martin's Press first novel contest. It's
hard to believe the author is so young, but on the other
hand, the book, which does hit all the right notes for a
detective novel, never once felt true or authentic. Lincoln
Perry and Joe Pritchard are a pair of ex-cops who've gone
into business together as PIs in Cleveland, Ohio. They are
hired by John Weston, the father of another detective, Wayne
Weston, who was recently found dead, apparently a suicide.
Wayne's wife and daughter are missing and John wants them
found, and to know what happened to his son, who he doesn't
think was capable of suicide. The case escalates from there
to involve the local Russian mafia, as well as a real estate
bigwig.
It's hard to talk about the book without spoilers, but
suffice it to say that the interactions between characters
never ring true. ***SPOILER****When Lincoln does find the
missing wife and daughter, he grows very attached to them and
the wife throws herself at him. It almost reads more like
Koryta is thinking "this is what should happen" than as a
truly believable plot development. There isn't any chemistry
between Lincoln and the woman. Plus, we've been lead to
believe that his true interest lies in newspaperwoman Amy
Ambrose, so there's an added element of unbelievability in
these sequences. This is just one example, but I felt when
reading that Koryta was just putting his characters through
their paces without really bringing them fully to life.
Certainly, a comparison of this book to Andrew Klavan's
Bishop/Weiss books, which also feature a two-man detective
agency, albeit with much more believable, even if
over-the-top, characters, leaves Koryta looking a bit
lightweight. If _Tonight I Said Goodbye_ is the start of a
series, I hope further books are more hard-edged and
believable.
Before Koryta's book, the last one I'd read was Adrian
McKinty's new
_Hidden River_. I'm not sure the book is as good as his
debut, but it is still pretty good. And McKinty sure likes
his femmes fatale. His protagonist, Alex Lawson, is a former
policeman in the Ulster Royal Constabulary in Northern
Ireland. Lawson stumbled onto some things he'd have been
better off not knowing while working undercover in the drugs
squad and shortly thereafter, he was fired, having been
caught stealing heroin from the evidence room. Now, he's
struggling to get by and raise the cash for his next fix,
when a couple of things happen: first, a policeman from
Scotland Yard, part of an inquiry into corruption in the
Irish force, pays him a visit and isn't satisfied with Alex's
claims that he knows nothing. Second, Alex receives the news
that a former girlfriend of his has been killed in Denver,
Colorado, where she was working for a non-profit
environmental group. When the girl's father hires him to look
into his daughter's death, Alex is able to get out of town
for awhile, one step ahead of both the British inquiry and
the corrupt cops who'd like to silence him.
McKinty does a great job of describing Denver and its
environs (the book jacket indicates he lives there now,
having relocated from Northern Ireland). Alex volunteers to
work for the environmental group as a fundraiser and is
trucked to various neighborhoods around town to go
door-to-door, and the descriptions of these neighborhoods
never rings false. Plus, Alex and a friend who came along
with him find lodgings in a run-down building on notorious
Colfax Avenue, a place where it isn't that difficult for Alex
to find his next fix. The book does a good job of charting
his downward spiral and his self-justifications that he's not
really an addict. It becomes clear to him that someone in the
non-profit must have discovered that his old girlfriend had
stumbled upon accounting irregularities and that that's why
she was killed. The group is the baby of a rich young man
with political aspirations and either he or his brother or
his beautiful wife knows more than they're letting on.
This was a good follow-up to _Dead I Well May Be_, and though
it covers similar territory, it never gets quite so gritty or
hopeless as that previous novel, though Alex's heroin
addiction does threaten to drag him down. He makes a number
of poor choices that result in a number of additional deaths
and we (and he) have to wonder if he wouldn't have been a bit
sharper without the drugs. But ultimately, the book holds out
some hope for redemption and ends on a much more hopeful
note. McKinty is a great talent and I'll be looking forward
to wherever he decides to take me next.
Craig Larson Plymouth, MN
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