Dying Embers

Rating:
Summary: Humor, plus characters to care about
Review: I enjoyed Bailey's previous novel, Private Heat, which was nominated for a Shamus award. This one is even better, with a tighter plot and even more humor. PI Art Hardin has a genius for one-liners. The humor drew me into the book, but it was the 3-D characters that kept me reading. These people--especially Art's wife and kids--are so real that you expect them to move in next door. The situations are equally believable. When a tied-up bad guy has a runny nose, Art Hardin holds a wad of tissues to his face and tells him to blow, then says, "Don't be embarrassed, I have three kids." The dust jacket says that Bailey was a licensed PI for 25 years, and it shows. This reads not so much like a novel as your coolest friend telling you real-world PI stories.

Rating:
Summary: Rip-roaringly good, and I usually hate detective novels ...
Review: This book kept me reading right down to the last page. Art Hardin is a believable private eye -- he's middle-aged and married with three kids. No Tom Selleck or Pierce Brosnan type stuff here, unless you count perhaps his wit. His wry "comments" on the situations he gets into kept me laughing even as the mystery got more and more puzzling. He starts out a routine case that should be boring -- finding a widowed businessman's old college girlfriend. However, the young lady turns up dead shortly after Art locates her, and Art finds himself being followed. After his office is broken into and child porn is planted there for the police to find, our hero stands to lose his career and possibly even his wife.

I found this book easier to follow than Bailey's first novel, plus Art's relationship with his wife gave the story a human touch for me. I highly recommend it. If you enjoy it as much as I did, do a search on Yahoo for the Art Hardin fan club, and we'll discuss the books!