> Subject: Re: The Popularity of the Private
Investigator
> Doesn't Peter Abrahams Oblivion have a PI in it? Is
it any good?
> Mark
Here's my take on this novel:
P. I. Nick Petrov was born in Russia but his family left when
he was two. His mother died when he was three. Nick's father
was in the KGB in the Soviet Union but came to the United
States after being a CIA contact. When the wall came down and
Reagan made his White House farewell address, Nick's father
shot himself. Nick was a member of the sheriff's department's
vice squad and partnered with cop Elaine Kostelnik, he solves
the Gerald Reasoner serial killer case. Ten years prior to
this book, "The Reasoner Case," a made for TV movie, starred
Armand Assante as Nick. With the success, Nick became a P.
I.
But success did not necessarily follow. Nick has closed his
downtown office and let his secretary go. He has moved his
office into the bedroom of his Venice home. It also cost him
his marriage when his wife caught him in bed with his former
cop partner, Elaine. As this book opens, Nick is testifying
in the trial of Ty Canning, a man Nick brought back from
Mexico to face a murder accusation. Nick is acting a little
confused, and that behavior continues when he is hired by
escort service worker Liza Rummel who wants Nick to find her
missing daughter, Amanda. As Nick begins his search, he finds
the clues and his personal life are blending into a red haze
of confusion until he finally collapses, the victim of a
cerebral hemorrhage due to brain cancer. After surgery he has
limited memories, and a notebook full of clues that are coded
in a KGB technique that Nick no longer remembers. Up to this
point in the novel, Nick has not been a very sympathetic
character, and the reader is not sure if they should be
rooting for this man or not. Sympathy does get extended when
he lies in his sick bed. Rather than give up, Nick decides
the best recovery strategy will be to stay on the case,
decipher the clues, and try to solve this puzzle before he
dies. Because the reader has seen the same clues, the reader
knows more than the detective. It is a startlingly brilliant
plot device to have the detective interview witnesses as much
to get information as to interpret it. For me, the technique
developed by Abrahams for this book makes this a challenging
read worthy of being ranked as one of the classics in the
private eye field.
This novel is an example of what the P. I. can do when it is
in the hands of a major writer. Most writers will only
produce genre-level fair (which I can enjoy a lot if I am in
the right mood) but it takes a major talent to extend the P.
I. character into literature. That is why when I read Ken
Bruen, I feel like I am reading something special. As long as
we have ten or twelve special books featuring the P. I each
year, I am going to be a happy man.
Best, GWN Gary Warren Niebuhr P. O. Box 341218 Milwaukee, WI
53234
piesbook@execpc.com http://my.execpc.com/~piesbook/piescatalog.html
Author of MAKE MINE A MYSTERY and A READERS GUIDE TO THE
PRIVATE EYE NOVEL
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
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