I picked this one up on the strength of a cover blurb by Michael Connelly,
who doesn't seem to be Stephen Kingish in handing them out. It's
too bad that Connelly had already used the name Hieronymous Bosch for his
hero, because Shannon's view of LA is even darker & more forbidding.
Jack Liffey's wife and little girl have left him & now all that
he has left is his ability to find missing kids. Here, just such
a search turns ugly when the child's mother is killed. Liffey ends
up on the periphery of a corrupt development project that folks are willing
to kill to coverup & he has to extract himself from the morass.
It all makes for a very bleak noir mystery.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (B)
Websites:
Book-related and General Links:
GENERAL
-African American
Mystery Page
-Black
Street Fiction
-Crime
Writers (David King)
-Dangerous
Dames: A Timeline of Some of the Major Female Eyes (Thrilling Detectives)
-Edgar
Award: Best First Novel
-Film
Noir and Pulp Fiction
-A
Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection
-Gumshoe
Site
-Hardboiled
: online reference site for all things noir
-Hardboiled
Heaven
-Hard Boiled
Noir Webring
-Martin's
Film Noir Page
-Mysterious
Home Page
-MysteryNet.com:
The Online Mystery Network
-Mystery
Net Awards Page
-No
Night Sweats
-RARA-AVIS
: mailing list devoted to the discussion of hardboiled (and noir) fiction
-The
Reader's Corner presents Female Sleuths
-Thrilling
Detective Website
-Twists,
Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang
-Women
of Mystery (Bookaholic)
If you liked Concrete River, try:
Campbell, Robert
-In
La-la Land We Trust (Read
Orrin's review, Grade: B)
-Alice
in La-la Land
-Sweet
La-la Land
Chandler, Raymond
-Trouble
Is My Business
-The
Big Sleep
-Farewell
My Lovely
-The
Lady in the Lake
-The
High Window
-The
Little Sister
-Playback
Connelly, Michael
-The
Black Echo
-The
Black Ice
-The
Concrete Blonde
-The
Last Coyote
-Trunk
Music
-The
Poet
Ellroy, James
-Black
Dahlia
-The
Big Nowhere
-LA Confidential
-White Jazz
-American
Tabloid
Hammett, Dashiell
-The
Maltese Falcon (one
of Orrin's Top Ten Novels) (Read
Orrin's review, Grade: A+)
MacDonald, Ross
(Lew Archer Mysteries)
-Black
Money
-The
Chill
-The
Drowning Pool
-The
Far Side of the Dollar
-The
Galton Case (Read
Orrin's review, Grade: A+)
-The
Moving Target
-The
Underground Man
-The
Wycherly Woman
-The
Zebra-Striped Hearse
-Sleeping
Beauty
Masterson, Whit
-Touch
of Evil (Read
Orrin's review, Grade: B)
Mosley, Walter
(Easy Rawlins Mysteries)
-Devil
in a Blue Dress
-A
Red Death
-White
Butterfly
-Black
Betty
-A
Little Yellow Dog
Comments:
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