Review of Tonight I Said Goodbye by Michael Koryta (St Martin’s Minatour, 2004)

Former marine turned private investigator Wayne Weston has seemingly committed suicide in a Cleveland suburb.  His wife and young daughter are missing and the police believe that Weston may have murdered them before turning the gun on himself.  Weston’s father thinks that theory stinks and hires PIs Lincoln Perry and Joe Pritchard to investigate, much to the annoyance of the local cops and FBI.  Both Perry and Pritchard served locally – Perry bounced out for assaulting the lawyer his fiancé left him for, and Pritchard has recently retired.  They quickly determine that Weston was working for a local tycoon and also had connections to the Russian mob.  Neither are happy at Perry and Pritchard’s involvement.  Then Weston’s best friend is shot dead as he meets Perry and Pritchard and the case takes a twist that ultimately leads back to revealing Weston’s fate.

Tonight I Said Goodbye is a solid piece of entertainment - good pace, plenty of action, well judged characterisation, effective dialogue, decent sense of place, and sound plotting (even though one aspect of the ending was telegraphed from quite a long way out).  There’s a little bit too much in the way of reflection and description in places, but Koryta writes in an easy-going manner that is deceptively rich and which draws the reader in and tugs them along.  There are plenty of twists, albeit none complete surprises, and the book builds in tension to become a real page-turner.  Just as with police procedurals, there are probably few new angles to be explored in the PI genre at this stage: what a reader is after then is a competent story that’s told in a strong voice – Koryta delivers on that score.

The Lazy Sunday Service: The first hurdle

Well I’ve managed to reach the three month milestone and to post something each day (apparently over 90 percent of blogs become dormant within three months). Whether what’s been posted has been worth reading is a different matter. I’ve been tracking viewing statistics using Google Analytics, and while I’m aware it’s not measuring those people using readers, daily visits have been pretty much the same from the first week to this! I guess it’s somewhat reassuring that it’s remaining relatively static, although it would be nice if it was on an upward trajectory; when it starts to plummet I’ll start to worry. Thanks to those that commented, given advice and encouragement.

My posts this week
Review of Satan's Lambs by Lynn Hightower
Freakin' Loser
Review of The Killing of Strangers by Jerry Holt
Thursday Teaser: Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
Aeromobilities
Saturday Snippet: Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill

It seems approprite that on a flight from Ireland to Ohio I'll be reading Les Roberts' The Irish Sports Pages concerning the Irish mafia in Cleveland. I've also got Michael Koryta's Tonight I Say Goodbye in reserve, along with a first draft of my own book with Martin Dodge, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, and a full draft of one of my PhD student's thesis. That should stave off any possibility of running out of something to read, even if there's a major delay.

Sorry for the lack of 'posts I enjoyed this week'. I barely kept on top of reading all blogs I subscribe to this week and I didn't keep a record of the posts I enjoyed. It's got to late Saturday night and I've run out of time to go back through my reader to re-find posts (and I'm on a slow GPRS connection that takes forever because the mobile broadband seems to have dropped off as it does every now and then) and I'll have left for the airport early this morning (hopefully the scheduling on this post has worked!). More from the far side of the pond tomorrow, hopefully.