Joey's Case

Rating:
Summary: Mario Balzic cannot talk his way into solving this case
Review: For months police chief Mario Balzic of Rocksburg, in western Pennsylvania coal-mining country, has been doding Albert Castellucci. Balzic has run out of things to say to the old man whose only son has been shot to death. But Castellucci is persistent. He does not care that the death occurred in Westfield Township, outside of Balzic's jurisdiction, or that his son, known as Joey Case, had the murderous end everybody in town saw as his inevitable destiny. All the old man wnats is for Balzic to look into the case, insisting that the investigator handling the case was a "capo tost" (a hard head), who had botched things from start to finish. Of course, K. C. Constantine would not beginning with this most recent encounter between the bitter old man and the increasingly enraged police chief if Balzic was not about to agree to look into matters.

"Joey's Case," the eighth mystery in this series, is the most unique for two reasons. First, Balzic is on the outside of this case looking in and nothing is going to change that over the course of this investigation. He might have the indulgence of the state police, but he knows full well going into this one that nothing is going to change, no matter who he engages in his inquisitive conversations. Second, Balzic has, for lack of a better word, "mellowed" a bit. The chief has been wound exceedingly tight in the most recent novels and I have been expecting him to snap in some way. While I expected something to shake the chief's foundation to get him turned in the right direction, I did not expect it to be a question of sexual dysfunction. Yet this hits the mark for Balzic has suddenly stopped drinking and there is even a chance, miracle of miracles, that he will listen to what his wife Ruth is trying to tell him (Hey, it could happen).

This novel offers an additional difference because this time around I definitely got the feeling that I was actually picking up on some of the clues. I might not have figured out how all the pieces were going to fit together, but Balzic was not doing that much better. The chief charm of these books remains the art of conversation as Balzic circles around the truth of this matter. I also liked the fact that the chief actually engaged in a pit more of cat and mouse in some of his unofficial interviews, which may be why one of the book's last conversations, where Ruth turns the tables on her husband, impressed me so much. Still, my chief contentment is that Constantine has started to reign his creation in a bit, because Balzic has been threatening to go off the deep end for quite some time and I have become rather concerned about the old boy. Then again, I was rather surprised to see from the cover art for "Joey's Case" that our hero has a head of hair.

Rating:
Summary: Mario Balzic cannot talk his way into solving this case
Review: For months police chief Mario Balzic of Rocksburg, in western Pennsylvania coal-mining country, has been doding Albert Castellucci. Balzic has run out of things to say to the old man whose only son has been shot to death. But Castellucci is persistent. He does not care that the death occurred in Westfield Township, outside of Balzic's jurisdiction, or that his son, known as Joey Case, had the murderous end everybody in town saw as his inevitable destiny. All the old man wnats is for Balzic to look into the case, insisting that the investigator handling the case was a "capo tost" (a hard head), who had botched things from start to finish. Of course, K. C. Constantine would not beginning with this most recent encounter between the bitter old man and the increasingly enraged police chief if Balzic was not about to agree to look into matters.

"Joey's Case," the eighth mystery in this series, is the most unique for two reasons. First, Balzic is on the outside of this case looking in and nothing is going to change that over the course of this investigation. He might have the indulgence of the state police, but he knows full well going into this one that nothing is going to change, no matter who he engages in his inquisitive conversations. Second, Balzic has, for lack of a better word, "mellowed" a bit. The chief has been wound exceedingly tight in the most recent novels and I have been expecting him to snap in some way. While I expected something to shake the chief's foundation to get him turned in the right direction, I did not expect it to be a question of sexual dysfunction. Yet this hits the mark for Balzic has suddenly stopped drinking and there is even a chance, miracle of miracles, that he will listen to what his wife Ruth is trying to tell him (Hey, it could happen).

This novel offers an additional difference because this time around I definitely got the feeling that I was actually picking up on some of the clues. I might not have figured out how all the pieces were going to fit together, but Balzic was not doing that much better. The chief charm of these books remains the art of conversation as Balzic circles around the truth of this matter. I also liked the fact that the chief actually engaged in a pit more of cat and mouse in some of his unofficial interviews, which may be why one of the book's last conversations, where Ruth turns the tables on her husband, impressed me so much. Still, my chief contentment is that Constantine has started to reign his creation in a bit, because Balzic has been threatening to go off the deep end for quite some time and I have become rather concerned about the old boy. Then again, I was rather surprised to see from the cover art for "Joey's Case" that our hero has a head of hair.