Friday, August 8, 2008

The Last Striptease (Joe Kozmarski) by Michael Wiley

Michael serves up some classic PI-fiction in this one! Joe Kozmarski is one of those alcoholic ex-cops with a past to make up for. He’s enlisted by a judge who wants him to prove his assistant is innocent of murdering a Vietnamese girl. Apparently she used to be kind of a wild child but that’s nothing compared to her trigger-happy brothers with who Joe tangles along the way. On the personal side he has a nephew to take care off, an ex-wife to get together with and his feelings for a female cop to deal with.
What makes this book a winner is not the fairly standard plot or characters but the fantastic pacing. At 245 pages, not too many subplots or characters and plenty of action you’ll be sure to be reading it in one go. The ending satisfies and still makes you want to read the next book.
With so many 500+ page books with an endless number of plots and way too many characters these days I loved reading something like this. All in all a solid debut, which earned it a Shamus nomination!

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