Ed,
I thought 32 Caddilacs was great. I very much liked the
shifting between characters and Ken Warren cracked me up, how
everyone underestimated him due to his speech impediment. As
a matter of fact, I was just thinking about this while
driving home today. I'm currently reading the next in the
series, Cons, Scams & Grifts, which has a somewhat
similar format, even brings back the gypsies from the
previous entry in the series. Gores builds an overarcing plot
that runs through the book, but takes little sidetrips along
the way. And I really enjoy these small episodes as each of
the repo men go about their individual cases, finding and
retrieving particular cars. I think these very specific and
detailed shorts ground the story and allow Gores to go a bit
(gloriously) over the top in other portions of the
book.
That said, 32 Caddilacs was a major shift in the DKA Files
series. The previous books are very much private eye
procedurals throughout (with multiple, but fewer POVs). They
do not have the over the top humor of the two more recent
books. I think it's telling that the crossover in one of the
early books was with Richard Stark's cold, humorless
Parker
(not to say the Parker books are entirely humorless, just the
character). The crossover in 32 Caddilacs was with Donald
Westlake's bumbling Dortmunder Gang.
By the way, the new book makes brief mention of Michael
Connelly's Harry Bosch.
Mark
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