Saturday, July 26, 2008

#32: You Could Call It Murder by Lawrence Block

British ex-pat Roy Markham looks for a missing girl in a small, snowy New England college, quickly peeling back the veneer and exposing dark doses of blackmail and scandal.

An early detective yarn from Lawrence Block, this one featuring another one-off P.I. Curiously, a little googling turned up that the novel was a tie-in to an ill-fated television show that went off the air before the book came out.

Perhaps because I read this back to back with another Block in a matter of days on vacation (see previous entry), I saw a lot of connections between Markham and the other protagonist, Ed London. Both are more highbrow detectives not afraid to get their hands dirty, both centered in New York but frequently traveling.

In the end, a pair of entertaining novels in a collection called "Five Great Novels by Lawrence Block" that I purchased for five dollars on the specials rack at a San Diego bookstore.

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