I loved Steve Ulfelder's Conway Sax novels so I was excited to learn about his return to fiction.
In this novel he introduces his new main protagonist, Archer Dixon. After all sorts of jobs this 38-year old man starts to work as a private investigator. As he's new at this and not your usual ex-cop or ex-soldier he's not so hardboiled at the start. He quickly learns how to be though as a simple case gets him involved with a bunch of dangerous Russian criminals. Luckily, he can count on a rag-tag bunch of friends among which are a bit of a lovable loser and two criminals.
The best part of this book is not the mystery or the action or dialogue. The strength lies in how Arch is an everyman and his buddy Kevin is not exactly a standard sidekick. Aside from that, the writing flows naturally and fast and as strange as it might sound I liked how the paragraphs were structured.
All just made for some relaxed and easy reading. I for one am eager to see how Archer's character will develop over the course of this series.
