1997 mystery, seventh in the Carlotta Carlyle series (neo-noir
private investigation). Twenty-four years ago, Thea Janis was a
teenage prodigy, who vanished and was believed dead. Now a client
comes to Carlotta with a new chapter in her writing style…
There's something of a problem of motivation here. Carlotta
mostly isn't getting paid, but nor (unlike the usual run of ethical
private eye) does she have a dead client or any particular reason to
believe that someone is being done out of what is rightfully theirs…
at least at first; it's just her interest that keeps her going. Yes,
eventually this gap is bridged, but the middle section of the book
felt a little aimless to me, as we meet a variety of people who think
that their money should make all their problems go away. (There are
lots of them, and perhaps they are also a bit too similar.) After that
long and over-slow build-up, the ending feels rushed.
This is reinforced because Carlotta's friends mostly don't show up; in
a long-running series I like to get some sense of progress in
relationships, and here those are mainly marking time or in one case
coming apart.
It's not a bad book, but like 1995's Hardware it feels to me like
just another entry in a series rather than a story in its own right.
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