1993 mystery, fifth in the Carlotta Carlyle series (neo-noir
private investigation). Carlotta's hired by a woman whose daughter
died in hospital, to try to get some closure; but soon the key witness
dies and the client goes missing.
The practical bits of this work very well, covering Carlotta's
social engineering and other practical means of intrusion, as well as
her polymorphic approach to interviewing witnesses, suspects, and
people who might be either (shifting role and emphasis in
mid-interview in response to what the subject wants to hear). The
difficulty is really with the driver behind the plot; it feels just
slightly off, as if Barnes had read an article about the subject and
decided that this was a good thing to put into a story but not got a
feel for it the way she clearly has for the bread-and-butter private
investigation work. (I'm comparing in particular with Coyote, two
books ago, which had some really solid things to say about the people
involved in illegal immigration; its topic was rather better
integrated with the rest of the book.)
At the same time someone's stolen Carlotta's garbage cans, and this
seems to be linked in some way to her adoptive "little sister"
Paolina. It's more incident than employment, but I like this ongoing
counterpoint to the neatness of a main case that starts at the
beginning of the book and finishes at the end.
It's certainly not a perfect book, but it's good of its genre; I'm not
recommending this series to everyone I meet, but as an example of a
post-cosy investigation that's not gratuitously cruel it does a decent
job and I'll certainly read more.
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