Allan Guthrie's new book isn't really a novel. It's more of a novella in book form, part of a series called "Most Wanted," crime novels for adult reluctant readers. It's hard to imagine even a reluctant reader who wouldn't enjoy this story. It's about Pearce, the hard man from Hard Man (among others), and this time he gets involved in a bad situation when an old girlfriend shows up and asks for his help. Since she ditched him years earlier after he gave her an expensive engagement ring, and since he believes she's running some kind of scam on him, Pearce isn't eager to offer his assistance. Besides, she has her two foul-mouthed offspring in tow. But a couple of things convince Pearce that she's on the level, and he agrees to do what he can.
If Pearce is involved, you can be sure that things are going to get violent and maybe even take a turn for the worse. So I'll leave it to you to discover just how things work out this time. To whet your appetite, I'll say that Hildy, Pearce's three-legged dog, is back; that Pearce hasn't mellowed a bit; and that you're probably going to be surprised a time or two.
It's quite a bit of fun, and you should be able to read the whole book in a half hour or so. Guthrie does a really admirable job with the limited vocabulary required for a book like this one. Check it out.
2 comments:
I cowrote The Case of the Stolen Samovar for adult new readers some years ago. It was fun. We wrote three other books, too. They're still in print, but I have no idea how many have been sold or even read. I think Al's book is probably a little more hardboiled, if not noir.
It's for sure hardboiled (by my definition) and not quite noir (by my definitiion). I hope some adult reluctant readers will be won over by it and by your books. How could they not be?
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