Wake Up Little Susie (Sam McCain Mysteries)

Rating:
Summary: A workmanlike effort that lacks punch.
Review: This murder mystery contains all the necessary elements. A clever, likeable investigator who does double duty as narrator. A clearly delineated sense of time and place. An intriguing murder with a number of potential suspects. And a surprise ending which, if not entirely convincing, is at least plausible on some level.
Sam McCain is a 23 year old private eye who also happens to be a lawyer. He loves the small Iowa town in which he grew up and where he still lives. Almost everyone is fond of Sam and his only discernible vice is that he smokes too much. When a woman's body is found in the trunk of an Edsel, Sam is pressed into service to find the killer. As the investigation unfolds, there are many scenes which serve to evoke the feel of life in smalltown America in the 1950s. Moreover, author Ed Gorman gives us a fair amount of good natured humor and the occasional moment of poignancy.
For me, two words sum up the mood of this novel, breezy and nostalgic. Gorman has done a competent, workmanlike job in writing this book. Somehow though, after turning the last page, I felt vaguely unsatisfied. It was as if I had completed a tasty meal and still felt just as hungry as I was when I started. Or as the precocious Sam McCain might have put it, "I guess nostalgia isn't what it used to be".

Rating:
Summary: A workmanlike effort that lacks punch.
Review: This murder mystery contains all the necessary elements. A clever, likeable investigator who does double duty as narrator. A clearly delineated sense of time and place. An intriguing murder with a number of potential suspects. And a surprise ending which, if not entirely convincing, is at least plausible on some level.
Sam McCain is a 23 year old private eye who also happens to be a lawyer. He loves the small Iowa town in which he grew up and where he still lives. Almost everyone is fond of Sam and his only discernible vice is that he smokes too much. When a woman's body is found in the trunk of an Edsel, Sam is pressed into service to find the killer. As the investigation unfolds, there are many scenes, some relevant to the crime at hand others completely unrelated, which serve to evoke the feel of life in smalltown America in the 1950s. There is much in the way of good natured humor and the occaisional moment of poignancy.
For me, two words sum up the mood of this novel, breezy and nostalgic. Gorman has done a competent, workmanlike job in writing this book. Somehow though, after turning the last page, I felt vaguely unsatisfied. It was as if I had completed a tasty meal and still felt just as hungry as I was when I started. Or as the precocious Sam McCain might have put it, "I guess nostalgia isn't what it used to be".

Rating:
Summary: Fun in the Fifties
Review: What could be better than life in Black River Falls, Iowa on a September Saturday in 1957? The new car of the future, the Edsel, is being introduced to the town at the local Ford dealership and there's balloons, hog callers and marching bands, baton twirlers, cub scouts and tap-dancing twins. Unfortunately, there's also the dead body of Susan Squires in the trunk of one of the new Edsels. Sam McCain, a young lawyer who's earning most of his income with his private investigator's license, is asked to look into the murder. In no time, he's got way too many suspects, among them the victim's husband, David. But, soon David turns up dead too and McCain's highschool honey, Mary, goes missing and Sam sets out on a mission to solve the case and find his sweetheart, before it's too late..... Ed Gorman has written an entertaining mystery that will transport you back to those nostalgic days of the 1950s. His writing is crisp and smart and full of witty and irreverent dialogue; his plot, tense and full of surprises and his scenes, vivid and at times, laugh-out loud funny. But it's Mr Gorman's characters that are the real strength of this novel. From the brandy sipping, cigarette smoking, rubberband shooting judge to the fat, bully of a sherriff with a skin condition, who only got the job because his father runs the town, to McCain's best friend, Jeff who's backing out of his engagement because his fiance might not be a virgin, this is a cast of unrivaled, quirky denizens you won't soon forget. Wake Up Little Susie is the second book of a terrific new series, full of small town detail and 1950's wisdom, that shouldn't be missed.

Rating:
Summary: Fun in the Fifties
Review: What could be better than life in Black River Falls, Iowa on a September Saturday in 1957? The new car of the future, the Edsel, is being introduced to the town at the local Ford dealership and there's balloons, hog callers and marching bands, baton twirlers, cub scouts and tap-dancing twins. Unfortunately, there's also the dead body of Susan Squires in the trunk of one of the new Edsels. Sam McCain, a young lawyer who's earning most of his income with his private investigator's license, is asked to look into the murder. In no time, he's got way too many suspects, among them the victim's husband, David. But, soon David turns up dead too and McCain's highschool honey, Mary, goes missing and Sam sets out on a mission to solve the case and find his sweetheart, before it's too late..... Ed Gorman has written an entertaining mystery that will transport you back to those nostalgic days of the 1950s. His writing is crisp and smart and full of witty and irreverent dialogue; his plot, tense and full of surprises and his scenes, vivid and at times, laugh-out loud funny. But it's Mr Gorman's characters that are the real strength of this novel. From the brandy sipping, cigarette smoking, rubberband shooting judge to the fat, bully of a sherriff with a skin condition, who only got the job because his father runs the town, to McCain's best friend, Jeff who's backing out of his engagement because his fiance might not be a virgin, this is a cast of unrivaled, quirky denizens you won't soon forget. Wake Up Little Susie is the second book of a terrific new series, full of small town detail and 1950's wisdom, that shouldn't be missed.