Mobtown

Rating:
Summary: I didn't mean to be anonymous
Review: ...this story, set in the late 1950's in Rochester, New York, about a rough-around-the-edges private eye is a great read.

Ike Van Savage, a Korean vet with a new divorce and a 10 year old daughter, doesn't turn away any clients. He need to pay the bills. So when the wife of a particularly oily character asks her to tail her husband, he accepts. This assignment is a no brainer. Eddie Gill is cheating on his wife with a cute young thing. The young girl comes to Ike's office while he's out....next thing he knows, she ends up dead.

Enter Vicky Petrone, trophy wife of one of Rochester's most noted mobsters. She thinks her husband is out to kill her. HE ends up dead.

A pattern is developing here....hang out with Ike Savage and you'll end up on the wrong side of the dirt.

The way Kelly ties all the story lines together is plausible, although I had a hard time following the 'spoiled, rich kid' angle that's introduced to further interest in Joe Petrone.

Kelly has said he plans to "carry the series throughout the 1960s" because he's "interested to see Ike's reaction to the social changes of the decade."

I'll be reading whatever Kelly writes. And, I'll be waiting to see who Hollywood casts in the movie adaptations!

Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Just Okay
Review: I agree with the other reviewers who found this book lacking. I too skimmed the last third, tired of the wandering plot and ponderous cultural references to 1959...by then the author had established that the weather was hot about 5 times too many, the villians entered and left like players in a British stage farce and I found it hard to believe that the hero was still able to physically function. The 'pulp fiction' angle wore out its welcome when it stopped leading anywhere plotwise.

Rating:
Summary: You may need to be a detective noir fan to enjoy this.
Review: I didn't enjoy reading this book. I think the noir type writing made me feel like I was reading a spoof that was too long. I enjoyed the Rochester references... maybe I just don't enjoy detective noir... although I enjoyed Agatha Christie... but I think that's not "noir".

Rating:
Summary: Good start, disappointing finish.
Review: I really wanted to like this book and I did at first. The author, Jack Kelly, does an admirable job in recreating a very specific time and place. The place is Rochester, a sleepy town in western New York where the Genessee River meets Lake Ontario. The home of Kodak, white hots and Luke Easter. The time is the summer of 1959. Fallout shelters, Gunsmoke and saddle shoes are all the rage.
The story is narrated by the main character, Ike Van Savage, private eye. In much the style of Philip Marlowe, Van Savage advances the story while at the same time making wry, sometimes comic, observations about human foibles and failings. Unlike many other "hard boiled" detectives found in the crime genre, Van Savage has an inner life. Kelly allows the reader to explore Ike's fears and self doubts as well as his personal relationships, even giving a fair amount of page time to Gloria, his 10 year old daughter.
Early in the novel, Van Savage is hired by Vicky Petrone, the beautiful wife of a local crime boss who has reason to believe her husband wants to kill her. As the investigation unfolds, Van Savage learns there may be a connection between this case and two other cases he has on his plate. One a series of arsons, the other an adultery investigation. Eventually, Ike and the reader both learn in piecemeal fashion that Vicky has a very interesting past that she had failed to voluntarily reveal.
So far so good.
My problem with this otherwise appealing book centers around the way in which the various plot elements are ultimately tied together and resolved. Let me just say that in trying to jolt the reader with a surprise ending, Kelly sacrifices the believability he has worked so hard to cultivate. The "mastermind" who is finally brought to justice is someone who in the real world would lack the means, motivation and street smarts required to carry out the complex web of crime described in these pages.
Jack Kelly is obviously a talented writer. A less contrived, more convincing plot, would have made Mobtown a great crime novel.

Rating:
Summary: Just Okay
Review: Is it too much to ask for one of today's writers to hammer out a decent private eye novel? Kelly's MOBTOWN has a decent premise, starts out fine, but quickly becomes just another story about a divorced ex-cop private eye who smokes pot when he's depressed and moans about not being able to help people. I skimmed the whole last third of the book, tired of the same old garbage today's mystery writers have been turning out over the last 20 years. And unless you were around in 1959, when the story takes place, you'll be lost with all the pop-culture references. I loved the sequence where our hero Ike Van Savage made a promise to his daughter to be on time for her birthday and - SHOCKER! - was tied up by the cops for several hours answering questions about a murder and missed the party. How original. And the identity of one of the killers will be obvious, especially if you've read a lot in this genre. Go read Max Allan Collins instead if you want a period mystery, or any of the old-time pulp writers who knew how to tell this kind of story.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and exciting noir!
Review: Jack Kelly's latest novel, Mobtown, is rock-solid noir, Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler style, or a like a Humphrey Bogart film. The characters are well defined, the setting is vivid and the mystery is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with pieces lying all over the place waiting to be fit together.

A cop kicked off the force for having morals, Ike Van Savage turns private investigator working the city streets of Rochester, New York. He's hired by a woman who wants to find out if her husband is fooling around. An Irish man hires Van Savage to find out for sure who is setting fire to his slum-rental properties. A good looking dame has hired him afraid her husband is going to try and kill her. The seriousness of this problem-her husband is part of the Arm in Rochester. He's well connected. He's with the Mob.

During a heat wave where temperatures fluctuate consistently in the high nineties with unbearable humidity, Van Savage is sucked into the underworld of organized crime and this one case could wind up being his last. He finds out the truth about who was behind having him taken off the force. People are trying to kill him.

Mobtown is poetically written in that classic noir style. Machine gun sentences-pop, pop, pop, pop-riddle the pages. Jack Kelly provides constant clever and witty dialogue. He knows how to build intense scenes and carry his characters through them. An exciting and entertaining story. I would love to see more of Ike Van Savage.
--Phillip Tomasso III, author of Third Ring, Tenth House and Mind Play

Rating:
Summary: Dark and edgy--very nice
Review: Private detective Van Savage pays the bills doing divorce work--dependable work in 1950s Rochester N.Y. where infidelity is common and as the modern age is being born. When a beautiful woman walks into his office with a story about her husband, Savage thinks it's more of the same. When she tells him that her husband is trying to kill her, as he's killed two previous wives, Savage is curious. When he finds out that the husband is the major figure in Rochester's mob, he knows he's in trouble.

Author Jack Kelly writes with a hard-hitting style that pays homage to the hard-boiled detectives of an earlier generation of mysteries while saying something fresh as well. His view of the 1950s as a time when the mob ruled, when honest cops were set up and destroyed, and when a day of hard work is followed by a night of hard drinking rings true. Savage is a sympathetic protagonist with family troubles and who just can't seem to stick to his own decision to keep his feelings out of what is going on.

A couple of coincidences bring together Savage's cases in ways that strain but don't break credibility but otherwise MOBTOWN is a small gem.

Rating:
Summary: Fast, Fun, Colorful Read
Review: Rochester is a town known more for Kodak than crime, but even in Western New York, 1959 the rackets are going strong. Joe Petrone is the local wiseguy and, according to wife #3, he has about as much loyalty to his betrotheds as did King Henry VIII. He's making noises like he's tired of her, and she wants Private Eye Dwight Van Savage to make sure she doesn't "accidentally" drive off a cliff or fall asleep in the bathtub.

"Ike" Van Savage makes for a good character because he's ordinary enough to earn the reader's trust and sympathy, just noble enough to keep going despite the odds stacked against him, and just dangerous enough to keep things interesting. Beyond all that, he seemed to be a good guy and a loving father. His scenes with his nine-year old daughter are both sweet and realistic, without being cloying. Ike may be hard-boiled on his surface, but his interior is warmer than Marlowe's every was.

Author Jack Kelly has not only created a likeable protagonist, but he has placed him in a fruitful setting as well. It's nice to read something a little off the beaten path, and Rochester seems like as good a place as easy to have a shot and a beer, and get beaten over the head. His evocation of 1950s America is excellent, with all the details down pat, from the cars and the clothes, to the smells in the air.

Highly recommended...