1989 mystery, second in the Carlotta Carlyle series (neo-noir
private investigation). Carlotta's old friend on the force Mooney has
been suspended after he beat up a man who attacked him; he says the
guy had a knife, nobody's found one, but there's one witness who
hasn't come forward. While Carlotta looks for the prostitute with the
snake tattoo, a rich teenager who's been roughed up is looking for his
missing girlfriend in a part of town that neither of them should be
visiting…
There's an investigation into corrupt cops going on in the
background, and of course that's going to come into the story too. And
if the reason for the girlfriend's odd behaviour is perhaps a bit too
obvious, well, such things weren't talked about as much in 1989.
But mostly this is solid procedural stuff, looking for people and
tracing chains of clues, with some action (more shocking for being
unexpected and not obviously attributable to a particular set of
villains) and some comic relief (mostly in the form of Carlotta's
bathroom being reconstructed by incompetent but cheap plumbers). And,
on a side note, some really well-drawn people, particularly a drama
teacher who shows up in the investigation and the missing girlfriend
herself.
I like Carlotta's voice, and attitude (world-weary but still
determined to do things right); the requisite feeling of being neither
tarnished nor afraid comes over well, the clean detective in a grubby
world, which makes of an effective updating of the noir atmosphere
into a different era, where corruption has to be a little more subtle
but is still widespread.
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.