All White Girls

Rating:
Summary: Pedophiles, pimps, and pornographers, oh my.
Review: ALL WHITE GIRLS is a classic hardboiled private eye story with a memorable protagonist in Big Dick Rickenbacher. It's a fast-paced murder-mystery full of sex and violence. The setting is sleazy, as are many of the characters, but that's all just part of a regular workday for Big Dick. If you like your private eyes to be no-nonsense, and live by the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of the law, this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: All White Girls
Review: ALL WHITE GIRLS is a face-paced thriller that keeps the reader turning pages.

When Big Dick Rickenbacher was accused of using brute force to apprehend a killer, he quits the force and becomes a 'contract for hire' and he has his own method of dealing the criminals.

Bracken, a masterful story teller, introduces several characters who are likely candidates for the murderer, but not until the last few remaining pages does he reveal the real killer.

Great read! This is my first time reading Michael Bracken, but ALL WHITE GIRLS made me a fan.

Rating:
Summary: Warning: don't lend All White Girls to your mother
Review: All White Girls is a one-sitting, in-your-face, rapid-fire, hardboiled mystery: and it�s damn good.

In the sleazy, dark corners of strip clubs and adult bookstores lurk the men who prey on young women. And in Bracken�s world there�s a steady flow of fresh, wide-eyed girls arriving at the bus station to feed the pedophiles, pimps and pornographers hunger. But one young woman is missing and another is found dead. Unlicensed private eye �Big Dick� Rickenbacher and Homicide Lieutenant Salvador Castellano cross paths as they�re both hot on the trail of dried sperm, stale beer and young runaways.

This is not a book to lend to your mother. (at least not my mother). All White Girls is full of sexual depravity. But oh is it fun!

Braken is the author of hundreds of short stories and at least seven other mysteries. His latest effort is a fast-paced, surprisingly well-written mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Look out for Big Dick!
Review: Big Dick Rickenbacher is the type of hero that attracted me to hardboiled private eye fiction. The same universal justice/moral code that Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe possess has been inherited by Bracken's tough as nails detective. He does what most of us believe we'd do in the same situation ... at least what we hope we'd be able to do. Michael Bracken brings a fresh take on a known storyline. But don't get me wrong, this is a damn good read. If you haven't read a similar story you'll be hard pressed to appreciate the original over Bracken's version. I'm giving it four stars for one reason and one reason only, I could put it down. If 4.9 stars was an option, All White Girls would get it. Buy it, read it, and let your friends know so they can buy it too.

Rating:
Summary: Fast paced action, interesting characters, quick read
Review: Hats off to Michael Bracken for a well-done story. Uncluttered language, fast paced action, interesting characters make for a fast read. The protagoinist, Big Dick is a caring, tough unlicensed private eye seeking a missing young woman. His seedy turf: adult book stores, strip clubs brings him in contact with pedophiles, pimps and pornographers. Among his friends are two reformed prostitutes. Big Dick renews a love interest with one, now a librarian, proving that people can change.
Can he trust his former partner, a police lieutenant and other menhe knows on the strip? An interesting conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the faint-hearted.
Review: If you like hardboiled mysteries that are tough as shoe leather, brutal as an eye gouge, and raw as a blustery winter's day, then Michael Bracken's "All White Girls" is for you.

In this slim, grim, fast-paced novel, Bracken doesn't just lift the lid to allow you a quick peek at the dirty underbelly of a typical crime-ridden metropolis (here called 'Windy City' to avoid offending any place in particular). Instead, he rips the top off, and shoves the soiled lives and sordid acts of its inhabitants in your face. In "All White Girls," he rubs your nose in humanity's degradation, as though demonstrating that this is what life and violence and death is really all about--and it's a far cry from the sanitized version you see on TV or read in the morning papers. Are you strong enough to take it?

"All White Girls" concerns two parallel threads. One thread connects former police detective Richard "Big Dick" Rickenbacher, now acting as a private investigator, who searches for a missing teenaged girl lost in the city. The other thread ties Rickenbacher's former partner on the force, Lieutenant Salvador Castellano, to an unidentified young woman savagely butchered in a hotel room. Both men slouch through the seediest parts of the city, turning over rocks to reveal a colorful assortment of human vermin in their quest for answers to their separate cases. In the course of their individual investigations, Rickenbacher's and Castellano's paths cross with regularity, and the story's threads begin to converge. There are plenty of suspects to be grilled, blind alleys to be trod, and red herrings to be disposed of as the two men spiral closer to the truth. Once you get past the gore and sleaze, you're in for a pretty good mystery puzzle with an unexpected conclusion.

The cast that populates "All White Girls" is a mixed bag. Major characters, like Rickenbacher and Castellano, are well drawn and fully realized. Secondary characters are less well defined and for the most part could have come from Central Casting. One, Sheriff Bubba Rogers of Bullfrog Junction, Mississippi, is a cartoon-like stereotype, whom mercifully the reader is only briefly exposed to. The setting--itself a character--however, provides ample compensation. Nightclubs and cafes and strip joints and the feel of a big city after dark are detailed with photographic clarity, and imbued with poignancy, like a Hopper painting.

Bracken's prose, as always throughout a prolific crime writing career spanning more than two decades, is direct and vigorous, with the impact of a blunt object laid across your skull. He minces no words, pulls no punches, and conceals nothing in coy euphemism. Yet within the stark description and matter-of-fact narration lurk traces of rough humor and glittering lines as sharp as a shard of a broken beer bottle thrust into the throat.

Reading "All White Girls" may leave you feeling in need of a cleansing bath--or perhaps a good fumigation. But the story and its imagery will not be easily washed from your memory.

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't put this down!!
Review: It seems lately that too many mystery writers are asking me to like characters who are stuck on themselves and their own wealth, totally obnoxious and ugly to even their friends-- or both! Not so with four terrific mysteries I've read in the last month: "All White Girls" by Michael Bracken; "The Big Switch" by Jack Bludis; "Pilikia is my Business" by Mark Troy; and "Voodoo That You Do" by Richard Helms.

Big Dick Rickenbacher's looking all over for Hubert Cove's daughter, who bought a bus ticket to Chicago and then disappeared. "All White Girls" revolves around two young women who ran away from home: one found dead but unidentified, and the one Rickenbacher can't find. Enlisting Jesse, a past love, in the search for Katherine Cove, Rickenbacker re-ignites a fire neither one is sure shouldn't have stayed put out! Even in a city the size of Chicago, runaway kids have some things in common, but the connection between these two young women, and a third-- long dead-- sure took me by surprise!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A unique voice in noir fiction
Review: Michael Bracken has written eight novels and hundreds of short stories published all over the world. He is also virtually unknown to the mystery community as a whole. Perhaps one reason is that, at least, his latest novel, ALL WHITE GIRLS is published by a very small press. Another reason might be that he writes a very dark hard-boiled novel which might not appeal to the majority of mystery and crime readers. In any event, he writes with a unique style and is well worth reading.
In Chicago, former partners, PI Dick Rickenbacher and Homicide Lieutenant Salvador Castellano, are separately involved in cases involving girls of the seedy area of strip clubs. Rickenbacher is hired by a father searching for his eighteen year old daughter. His search takes him to the strip at the same time a female body is found dead in a flop house. Castellano is investigating that one. As we follow Rickenbacher, we are exposed to the underside of life in Chicago. We meet hookers, pimps, alcoholics, drug addicts, killers and the cops who try to keep them straight. In the able hands of Michael Bracken it is a descent into the bowels of hell.
Michael Bracken has a very unique voice in the subgenre of hard-boiled crime fiction. There are only antiheroes here where death is often seen as a release and murder is taken way too casually. There is little in the form of descriptions as the plot moves along rough and tough like a jackhammer tearing up a street. Relationships are temporary and a happy ending is well beyond belief. For a relatively brief novel, Michael Bracken packs quite a whollop. He is not for everybody but if noir fits your taste, don't pass him by. A strong recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: A unique voice in noir fiction
Review: Michael Bracken has written eight novels and hundreds of short stories published all over the world. He is also virtually unknown to the mystery community as a whole. Perhaps one reason is that, at least, his latest novel, ALL WHITE GIRLS is published by a very small press. Another reason might be that he writes a very dark hard-boiled novel which might not appeal to the majority of mystery and crime readers. In any event, he writes with a unique style and is well worth reading.
In Chicago, former partners, PI Dick Rickenbacher and Homicide Lieutenant Salvador Castellano, are separately involved in cases involving girls of the seedy area of strip clubs. Rickenbacher is hired by a father searching for his eighteen year old daughter. His search takes him to the strip at the same time a female body is found dead in a flop house. Castellano is investigating that one. As we follow Rickenbacher, we are exposed to the underside of life in Chicago. We meet hookers, pimps, alcoholics, drug addicts, killers and the cops who try to keep them straight. In the able hands of Michael Bracken it is a descent into the bowels of hell.
Michael Bracken has a very unique voice in the subgenre of hard-boiled crime fiction. There are only antiheroes here where death is often seen as a release and murder is taken way too casually. There is little in the form of descriptions as the plot moves along rough and tough like a jackhammer tearing up a street. Relationships are temporary and a happy ending is well beyond belief. For a relatively brief novel, Michael Bracken packs quite a whollop. He is not for everybody but if noir fits your taste, don't pass him by. A strong recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: hardboiled noir
Review: This book has a hardboiled detective AND a tough cop. Two cases that intertwine with unexpected twists to a powerful ending. As hardboiled and gritty as they come, this book is highly recommended. And you have to like a guy call Big (...) Richenbacher