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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
More Kitty Please - WONDERFUL, 11 Mar 2008
Every so often a book comes along and just sweeps you away; which is exactly what Richards' homage to private eye fiction of the 1930's did for me. This is a huge departure from her Madeline Carter contemporary thrillers; not only with the setting, but also in terms of style and pace. It features Katherine `Kitty' Pangborn who works as a secretary for boozy and troubled Private Eye Dexter `Dex' Theroux in depression hit Los Angeles; just after Wall Street crashed around them. The collapse of the stock-market claimed her wealthy industrialist father, a man who gave her financial security but not the emotional support she needed. Kitty suddenly finds herself losing the sheltered and privileged lifestyle she once enjoyed. She is haunted by her father's suicide, never knowing her mother; she tries to pick up the pieces in her world now tumbled upside-down. Despite being nearly destitute, she is resourceful and strong in spirit and those traits are exactly what Dex needs in his life. The troubled P.I. is a former veteran of WW I, who looks at the world through the ridges of a whisky tumbler. Hints are made about why he drinks so much, but I am sure more will be revealed in further adventures; because this novel screams `series', such is the gentle intensity of the narrative. Taking the familiar conventions that shaped the work of Chandler, Hammett and the like; Richards reshapes them from their genre-mould, creating a fresh outlook on the era we term the `golden age'.
So when a shapely woman named Rita Hepplewaite comes knocking at their office, you know right-away that Kitty and Dex are in for some very serious trouble. There are moving insights into how the rich and the ever-growing poor in 1930's L.A. co-exist and of course where there is disparity, there will be crime. As Dex struggles due to his love of the bottle, Kitty acts as his guide through this adventure. Through their mutual friend [the kindly fixer] `Mustard', they find themselves seeking a dead-man, who may not be dead. The trail leads Kitty and Dex to San Francisco where Kitty meets up with her wealthy former friends, and soon, even stranger women appear who are also seeking the missing dead-man. To make matters worse, it seems many of L.A.'s bootleggers and crime-lords are also after the mysterious dead-man who could be the missing Harrison Dempsey; because not only did he have lovers, including the vampish Rita Hepplewaite, but he was also married, as well as heavily in debt to the mob. The trail will snake through the East Coast drinking parlours, diners, shipping liners as well as traversing the roads and tram-system of the city of angels. The writing is well researched, captivating, hard-boiled but with a compassionate eye that makes it impossible to escape the flow of the narrative.
In a day when some books come to my table bloated, over-written and vanilla, it is with sheer delight to read such a sharp and captivating mystery. I felt moved by the descriptions of poverty but also by the sheer pride and resourcefulness in Kitty Pangborn. I have a prediction: Pangborn will become a major character in the genre, because her life [and what we yet do not know about her], makes me thirst for more. At times the book is heartbreaking, at times it's fast and furious and at times perceptive about how people lie and deceive - but at all times it showcases brilliant storytelling. I loved it completely as it is an excellent tale of a bygone |
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