RogerBW's Blog

Steel Guitar, Linda Barnes 04 August 2020

1991 mystery, fourth in the Carlotta Carlyle series (neo-noir private investigation). Carlotta runs into her old bandmate Dee Willis, who's stayed in the music business and finally made it big. But Dee's behaving weirdly even for her, and the past echoes into the present.

There's blackmail here, and corruption both large and small; and if you lie down with pigs, you're going to get muddy. Which is something of a recurring theme of the series, really; Carlotta wants a simple solution, with good guys victorious and bad guys punished, and that's never what she gets.

And of course there always more complications. Here they include Dee's tentative relationship with her new record company (she's worked hard to get this far and they could drop her in an instant), and Carlotta's ex-husband Cal who left her for Dee. And a friend's suicide years ago that suddenly takes on a whole new level of significance.

What's relatively underplayed this time round is the recurring characters; Paolina, Carlotta's adoptive "little sister", is almost absent, and her bad-idea lover Sam Gianelli doesn't show up at all. The new cast is interesting, and so's the new history, but the balance is a bit off, even if it's attempting to compensate for the relatively continuity-heavy Coyote.

I wouldn't jump into the series here, but it's a good one nonetheless.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: Coyote | Series: Carlotta Carlyle | Next in series: Snapshot

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1