Great Book Ecapes

Anyone remember the old detective Eliot Ness wearing a gabardine belted mac and a trilby hat, in the Untouchables. The straight-shooter who believes that the law, whether good or bad, is paramount ? Well, this book reminds me of that but totally up-to-date! Love it, love it, love it. If you are too young to know who I am talking about don’t worry you will get the sardonic style as you read it.

This book was so complex and exciting I hung on every word and hadn’t a real clue right until the end. This is a; who killed who with a cast of several characters to choose from, and I switched back and fore like a child in a sweetshop!

Written with the two main characters point of view, Henry Jackman and Detective Donna Sirken, for me it worked extremely well.

Henry is mild mannered wishing he was somebody, Sherry his girlfriend was an intelligent somebody who gets attacked in Henry’s apartment. Somehow Henry seems to get most things wrong but tries so hard to find out who attacked her and why. Here is where it gets really interesting. When other characters come into play the intricacies double. Behind the facade of murders and attacks there are seemingly totally unrelated undercurrents of behaviour.

Rozanski, gives the reader a hint of marrying everything together with crafty wink, the journey wonderfully compelling and the destination satisfactorily rewarding.

Henry so determined to do his own investigations into the attack on his girlfriend he drives Detective Donna Sirken mad with each theory he comes up with.  This is a book that explores how consciousness works, our waking selves vs our sleeping selves.  Henry sleepwalks and you guess that he gets up to all sorts of things during the night, but that doesn’t really help you what is going on.

There are real depths to the characters which questions how well you know people. The seemingly mild mannered man in Henry, and the single minded Donna as a detective but a pushover in her private life.  Henry’s austere parents, the friend who offers comfort; well I never guessed that!   The more Henry accuses others of being of not behaving honestly, the more bizarre his own behaviour becomes which is a nice touch throughout the novel. Each crime is seemingly fathomable but there still appears no real reason or perpetrator to pin them.

I just have to give you a taste of this entertaining book, here is Henry on one of his investigative missions:

“A hundred and fifty commuters were waiting for the shuttle by the time it rolled in, in its usual lackadaisical way. A hundred and fifty New Yorkers pawing at the ground, stamping and snorting and ready to bolt onboard the moment the car opened its doors, on guard to jump into the first available seats. Me, I don’t bother. It’s only a short ride to Grand Central; and the sardine crush of people keeps you upright even if there’s nothing to hold onto.”

Doesn’t that just conjure up the most descriptive picture in your mind?
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Many thanks to Biting Duck Press for an ARC via NetGalley.