Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Darkness, Sing Me A Song by David Housewright

After a long absence, Holland Taylor, ex-cop and now private investigator in St. Paul, Minnesota, returns in Darkness, Sing Me A Song by David Housewright (Minotaur, 2018). This is the fourth book featuring Taylor; the first, Penance, won the 1996 Edgar for Best First Novel. Housewright has a second series of 14 titles so far, also set in St. Paul, with another ex-cop named Rushmore McKenzie. His short stories appear in perhaps a dozen anthologies, many of them from the Minnesota Crime Wave, a group of well-known Minnesota crime writers. (What is it about Minnesota that makes so many of its residents think about felonies?)

Holland Taylor is in a rut. He knows it, his friends know it, and his mother reminds him of it repeatedly. He still has no real inclination to do anything about it, so he continues to perform routine background investigations and such to earn a living without giving it much thought. One of the lawyers he and his partner Freddie do a lot of work for pulls him into the defense of Eleanor Barrington, a wealthy socialite matron who is accused of killing her son’s girlfriend. Since there is a credible eyewitness to the shooting, this is going to be an elusive rabbit to pull out of the hat.

Almost immediately a resourceful newspaper reporter learns that the dead girl was not who she said she was. There is no person with that name and that background, and Holland sets out to learn who she really was and what or who she was hiding from. Along the way he learns the Barrington family owns a country estate that is considered desirable property by a firm that supplies sand to the fracking industry. The digging done so far has significantly damaged the surrounding town and the residents are up in arms just as the company seeks to acquire more land by eminent domain to expand their operation. Some of the fracking industry proponents are convinced Holland is in the area to stop it and seek to dissuade his involvement by physical means.

I was happy to see that Holland still has Ogilvy, the French lop-eared rabbit, who roams the apartment freely, chewing on electrical cords. Holland still has a problematic romantic life but a promising candidate appears in this book, a professor from a local university.

I like everything I have ever read by David Housewright. His characters are consistently and realistically sketched, even if I wouldn’t want to actually meet some of them. His writing, pacing, and plotting are compact and economical without giving the impression of terseness or abruptness. Only when the book ended did I realize that I couldn’t think of a single scene or character that didn’t move the story or Holland forward in some way, yet all threads were neatly tied off and nothing was left unaddressed. He is another author that deserves a larger audience.

·                     Hardcover: 288 pages

·                     Publisher: Minotaur Books (January 2, 2018)

·                     Language: English

·                     ISBN-10: 125009447X

·                     ISBN-13: 978-1250094476

Aubrey Hamilton ©2018

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.