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Review of THE DIRT-BROWN DERBY by Ed Lynskey
Mundania Press, July 2006
Private investigator Frank Johnson doesn't want to get involved in a murder investigation, but when a grieving mother offers him two hundred thousand dollars, he decides he can't afford to walk away from the case. Teen Emily Taliaferro was killed, apparently by her horse. But there's more dirty in the rural Virginia town than just an accidental death. Punks lean against the walls and threaten strangers--including Frank, and Emily wasn't exactly a sweet and virginal girl. It doesn't take long to figure out she was having an affair with her horse trainer.
Johnson's investigation lets him run into Sheila, the old girlfriend who helped him get started in the private eye business, but the local sheriff warns Johnson to get out of town. Still, Johnson doesn't give up easily, even when he's jumped and beaten.
While Johnson can see that there's something very rotten going on in the town, figuring out what really happened to Emily is a lot tougher. And when his leading suspect joins Emily in death--this time obviously by murder, it seems that all of Johnson's leads have petered out. Of course, staying ahead of the local rapist-rednecks is another problem for Johnson.
Author Ed Lynskey (see more BooksForABuck.com reviews of mysteries by Lynskey) writes a classic hard-boiled mystery. His sleuth, Frank Johnson, is world-weary, occasionally introspective, and cursed with a flexible but hard-working set of ethics that won't let him take the easy way out. Lynskey matches rough characters with sparse language and a weary and gray environment that belies what should be bucolic horse pastures and country. THE DIRT-BROWN DERBY is one of those books that grabs you early. I couldn't put it down and read it in a single sitting. I'm happy to recommend this one.
Four Stars
Reviewed 9/15/06
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