Looking For a Good Book

It is the 1970’s and perhaps there has never been an era where the generation gap has been so pronounced or more obvious. It may have been in the 60’s when Jack Weinberg declared “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” but it was the decade that followed that took this to heart. The conflict in the generation gap perhaps shows itself most strongly when two people in different generations are forced to work together – such as in a police force.

In Carolyn Weston’s murder mystery, Poor Poor Ophelia, homicide detective Al Krug is newly partnered with Detective Casey Kellog – a college-educated former surfer. Kellog is the youngest detective on the Santa Monica police force. To say that Krug and Kellog go about their work in vastly different ways is an understatement.

The pair are called upon to solve a gruesome murder – a woman is found floating in the nearby bay. Around her neck is a plastic bag containing a law firm member’s business card. Soling this should be straightforward, but Krug and Kellog have to first learn how to work with each other.

This book was the basis for the 1970’s television show, The Streets of San Francisco. The location, of course, was changed, as was the name of the two detectives, but the concept of an older detective working with a hippie-era detective remained.

The book suffers a bit from being very much of its time period. The challenge of two people of different generations working together is likely timeless, but this particular story really does feel more like historical fiction or someone today setting a story in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s as a period piece.

Yet … I enjoyed it.

Perhaps it’s because I enjoyed watching the television show with Karl Malden and Michael Douglas. Perhaps it’s because I’ve come to enjoy detective/mystery fiction. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in this time period so it brings back memories for me. And perhaps it’s a little bit of all of these.

The story isn’t the mystery, of course. The story is ‘how do two people so different learn to work together?’ Author Carolyn Weston handles this well, which makes the mystery (oh yeah … there’s a murder to solve here, too!) more interesting.

I wouldn’t rush out to make sure I got a copy of this book, but I enjoyed it and would definitely be interested in reading the others in the series.  I’m also interested in watching The Streets of San Francisco again – especially the first episode which sounds very much like this story.

Looking for a good book? Poor Poor Ophelia by Carolyn Weston was the basis for the television series The Streets of San Francisco and and is a murder mystery in which two detectives from very different generations must learn to work together in order to solve the crime.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Poor Poor Ophelia

author: Carolyn Weston

series: Krug & Kellog #1

publisher: Brash Books

ISBN: 9781941298497

paperback, 212 pages

Antonia Scott does not like to be bothered.  When she hears footsteps coming up her attic stairs, she knows, just knows, that someone is coming for her.  But why? She’s never been a police officer. She’s never worn a badge or carried a weapon. She’s never been a lawyer or a judge.  But Antonia Scott has solved dozens of crimes. She has a gifted forensic mind, and her ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. But she’s been a recluse since a personal tragedy struck.

The footsteps coming to get Antonia belong to Jon Gutierrez, a good but currently disgraced cop who got caught planting evidence. Officially he’s removed from duty, but he’s now working for a secret organization that works in the shadows to solve some of the most violent crimes in the EU. Jon’s first task is to convince Antonia to work with him. That might be the easy part.

The pair will then be asked to solve a series of ritualistic killings (which started with the discovery of a teenage boy of a wealthy family drained of every last ounce of blood). The high-profile daughter of one of the richest men in Spain has been kidnapped and there’s reason to believe she may be next for the ritual murder.  Her last, best hope of being found is Antonia and Jon.

I’ve read a fair amount of dark mysteries/thrillers from Scandinavian authors, but I’ve read virtually nothing translated from the rest of the EU – here, specifically, Spain. 

Author Juan Gómez-Jurado does a really nice job of setting up our characters at the start of the book while still keeping us interested the larger story. It does feel as though we spend a fair amount of time on the two main characters – getting some background on them and watching them get familiar with one another – as though Gómez-Jurado is laying the foundation for a series of books.

A book (and series) like this is generally driven by the characters and in Jon and Antonia we have two very different but compatible (mostly compatible because they have the same goal) protagonists.  Antonia can ‘see’ behind the crimes and Jon has the ability to follow her lead and finish the task. Both have distinct personalities, which on the surface don’t appear to mesh well but of course will mostly work quite well (‘mostly’ because we’ll need something to keep them both on edge a bit).

I really enjoyed Antonia’s trait of knowing obscure foreign words – words which she uses to perfectly describe a situation or scene (“Mångata. In Swedish, this is the reflection the moon makes as it traces a path across the water.”).

This is a detective thriller, and Antonia and Jon are called to solve something pretty horrific. To that end, this is NOT a cozy mystery. In fact this would be the exact opposite.  It is dark and brutal and gruesome. We do get the POV of the captive and her constant fears at what, worse, is yet to come.

Looking for a good book?  If you like dark detective/thrillers, be sure to get in here on book #1 of a series out of Spain, Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Red Queen

author: Juan Gómez-Jurado

translator: Nick Caistor

series: Antonia Scott #1

publisher: Minotaur Books

ISBN: 9781250853677

hardcover, 384 pages

Steve Rockfish is a Private Investigator in Pennsylvania.  But work has been thin to non-existent thanks to the lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.  He’s got a lot of bills and not a single job to cover those bills.  His prized possession, his car, is at extreme risk of being repo-ed and he’ll need to hide it until he can make payments again.

When a job opportunity arises, and a pretty simple one at that – investigate a location and the legend of a supposed child-trafficking ring, on behalf of a proposed television program – he eagerly takes on the job.

Early in the investigation Rockfish meets Jawnie McGee, the great granddaughter of a local policeman gone missing while investigating the original crimes. That policeman’s notes have been sitting in a file box for decades and Jawnie’s been trying to get them turned over to her.  The new chief sees no reason for Jawnie not to have them, so she has picked up the box the same day that Rockfish introduces himself to her.

Jawnie and Rockfish join forces to go through Jawnie’s great grandfather’s notes. What neither realizes is that there are forces at work in the community doing some work that they don’t necessarily want exposed to someone like an out-of-towner PI or a snoopy descendant of a cop. When those forces have deep connections inside the police department, it means trouble for Rockfish and McGee.

Lately I’ve had a serious interest in reading 1950’s & 60’s style pulp fiction and I’ve wondered if there’s anyone writing in this vein anymore, so I was drawn to this book based on the cover and the description, which seemed right up my alley. I’m glad to say that it is.

Author Ken Harris manages to write a hard-boiled mystery in our very modern setting. It’s a really nice blend.

The book, while being a mystery and action story, really relies character to drive it. Here that character is primarily Steve Rockfish and in moderation, Jawnie McGee.  We don’t get a lot of background of either character and our understanding of them is based solely on how they react to the events in the story.  We see that Rockfish is cool and collected even when faced with direct threats and while being shot at.  He’s classic tough guy PI.

Jawnie is a little more of an enigma.  She doesn’t come with the investigator’s experience, but she does have desire and the fresh, untainted, expectations that counter Rockfish’s gruff outlook. The complement each other well through the course of the investigation.

Steve and Jawnie do require a little outside help to get them through, which is a little bit convenient.

As someone who grew up watching P.I. television shows from the 70’s and 80’s, I can’t help but compare Steve Rockfish to Jim Rockford. There’s even a character named “Angel” here (“Angel” was Rockford’s ‘sidekick’). I definitely would have preferred a name that didn’t seem like it was a parody.

I liked the way this story ends (I don’t want to give it away) and it makes me eager to read the next volume in what I hope will be a long-running series.

Looking for a good book? The Pine Barren Stratagem by Ken Harris is a solid, classic PI action story set during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you like 1970’s P.I. television, or 1950’s/60’s hard-boiled detective fiction, this is a book need to read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netglley, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Pine Barren Stratagem

author: Ken Harris

publisher: Black Rose Writing

ISBN: 9781684338719

paperback, 250 pages