1987 mystery, first in the Carlotta Carlyle series. Carlotta was in
the Boston Police, but left for reasons which aren't yet clear; now
she's a private eye without clients. Then a nice old lady, worried
about what's happened to her brother, offers her a bundle of cash to
look into the matter…
I picked this up in the same second-hand bundle as It's Murder,
My Son, and found it fascinating to see the difference in the
authors' approach to the first book of what's very evidently planned
to be a series. As before, there is obvious pipe-laying going on here
with the introduction of a number of well-observed characters who are
presumably going to recur in future books. But Carlotta isn't
undergoing a massive change of lifestyle; she's known these people for
a while, so the reader must effectively be introduced to them without
provoking a pointless in-character reminiscence. That works here, and
I got the sense of coming in to an ongoing situation rather than of
everybody having been waiting in the author's head until it was their
turn to walk on stage.
There's a solid feeling of Boston here, which reminded me of
Margaret Ronald's Spiral Hunt. Lots of people set books in Boston,
and even talk about landmarks, but both Barnes and Ronald make the
place feel real in a way that even I (having only visited once or
twice) can tell comes from a genuine knowledge of and love for the
city.
The main case deals with the daftness of NORAID and "Irish
sympathisers" who've never even seen the country they claim to love,
and makes a solid and subtle point about subversion that I'm going to
appropriate for game plots. There's a side plot dealing with a
time-share offer that's clearly too good to be true, but finding out
how it's too good is a challenge in itself… and an opportunity.
I like Carlotta. She has friends, and allows them to use their talents
to help when she's got in over her head. Sure, she has to do a fair
bit of walking alone down the mean streets… but if she can arrange to
have some backup, she most certainly will.
One might get a sense of Carlotta having been put together from a box
of attributes – very tall, ex-cop, redhead, has a cat, crazy artist
roommate, adopted "little sister" in the bad part of town – but Barnes
manages to slot all those together into an cohesive personality.
The book doesn't coruscate, but it has a quiet excellence that
surprised and pleased me. Followed by The Snake Tattoo.
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