First and foremost, Barry and I would like to express
our deepest condolences to Patti Abbott and the family over the passing of Patti’s
husband, Phil. Cancer is such an evil bastard. It takes and it takes and
somehow the rest of us are supposed to just go on as if everything is okay when
nothing will ever be okay again.
And, yet, somehow we must go on. That going on is
brutal and it continues day by day. As this is Friday, that going on means it
is time for another FFB review. Neither Barry nor I had anything new, so Barry
suggested I run again his review below which previously appeared in this space
back in June of 2016. His wish was my command and so it shall be. For the full
list of reading suggestions head over to Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom blog.
KILLED ON
THE ROCKS (1990) by William L. DeAndrea
Reviewed by
Barry Ergang
Matt
Cobb is the vice-president of the Special Projects division of a television
network identified only as “the Network.” As he explains in his first-person
narrative: “‘Special Projects’ is the title some nameless propaganda genius
gave years ago to the part of the Network that would handle everything too
nasty for the Legal Department, and too sensitive for Public Relations…I’d
never lusted after the job, and sometimes I didn’t want it now, but I had it,
and I did the best I could. I tried to keep things as legal as necessary and as
moral as possible.”
The
network has been targeted for a takeover by billionaire G.B. Dost, who “bought
companies the way a kid bought baseball cards, and treated them that way, too:
collecting them, trading them, rearranging them, and for all I know, flipping
them against other corporate raiders to see who could get his company closest
to the stoop without touching, winner take all.” But the Network’s president
tells Cobb someone is trying to quash the deal, shows him an anonymous letter
of warning, and assigns him to accompany a number of other Network personnel to
Dost’s northern New York estate, the aptly-named Rocky Point, where
negotiations are supposed to begin in a home whose residents, regular and
temporary, include Dost, his wife, his son, his business partner, and his
longtime domestic help.
It’s February, it’s been
snowing in the Rocky Point area periodically for weeks, and it’s snowing on the
drive up. In fact, it’s becoming a major snowstorm. And so we have the setup
for a very entertaining take on a classic “impossible crime” situation: a
murder victim—in this case Dost—found in a field of unmarked snow.
The nature of the murder is such that the killer would have to be close to the
victim. Traditionally, the only footprints in the snow would be the victim’s,
leaving readers and detectives to ponder how the murderer could have approached
and slain the victim, then departed without leaving prints of his or her own.
For Matt Cobb the question becomes not only who killed Dost, but also how and
why his body lay a significant distance from the house in utterly unmarked snow.
Killed
on the Rocks is written in an engagingly wry-toned conversational style and
filled with its share of semi-hardboiled action and reasonably
well-differentiated characters. This is the first of this author’s series that I’ve
read, though I’ve known of it for years. I cannot only recommend Killed on the Rocks as a clever, fast-paced
diversion, I’m sure if I’m lucky to live long enough, I’ll read other Matt Cobb
mysteries.
Warning: some occasional
raw language, including a few—but
not a lot of—f-bombs, so those easily offended
will want to avoid this one.
© Barry Ergang 2016, 2019
Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has
appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is
available at Amazon and at Smashwords. That includes his his highly
regarded tale, The Play Of Light And Shadow. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/.
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