Shooters & Chasers
Non-series
Lenny
Kleinfeld
Five Star (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59414-739-6 (1594147396)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59414-739-5 (9781594147395)
Publication Date: January 2009
List Price: $25.95
Synopsis (from the publisher): A revered Chicago architect is dead on the pavement, gunned down by an inept mugger. Homicide detectives Mark Bergman and John "Doonie" Dunegan bust the mugger, who claims he wasn't the murderer, or even the mugger -- despite being in possession of the murder weapon and the victim's wallet. The prosecutor's a closet thespian. The defense attorney is neurotically insecure and the lone defense witness is a chronic liar. The prosecution's case is unraveled by the detectives who built it. The State's attorney is up for re-election and doesn't want to hear about it. The real killers, a pair of world-class assassins hell-bent on making a world-class syrah, were hired by a Los Angeles billionaire philanthropist. But which one? While narrowing the list, Mark and Doonie end up in Southern California, neck-deep in a three-sided war with the assassins and a squad of private security goons.
Review: Lenny
Kleinfeld's debut suspense novel, Shooters
& Chasers, is largely a police procedural that is
interspersed with elements of a comic caper, legal thriller, and yes, a
little romance. Regardless of how it's defined, though, it's a pleasure
to read.
Chicago cops Mark Bergman and John "Doonie" Dunegan nab a suspect in
the senseless murder of a local architect. But Emilio "Meelo" Garcia
insists he didn't do it. He spins a far-fetched tale of events that led
to his being in the motel where he was arrested. No one believes him,
and the prosecutors not only have an open-and-shut high profile case,
it's a political springboard for greater things to come. But Mark and
Doonie go through the motions of checking Meelo's story out and one or
two details turn out to be true. That leads them to continue the
investigation until they're convinced the suspect's original wildly
improbable story actually may be the truth. But who'd want to kill the
architect, whose design is up for consideration as the new Los Angeles
Fine Arts Museum? The answers lie in southern California where the two
cops find competition among the rich and famous for recognition to be
deadly.
For the most part, the plot in Shooters
& Chasers evolves from the perspective of the two cops, Mark
and Doonie. But virtually every major character, and there are more
than a few, has a point of view in the story that's replete with
intersecting subplots. It is a measure of how crisply written this book
is that the reader can keep them all straight. And at over 400 pages,
the book is fairly long, yet doesn't feel that way. Many scenes are
written from different points of view, something that's typically hard
to pull off without seeming repetitive but is done exceptionally well
here. The murder scheme is comically convoluted; the assassins that
pull it off know it is as well, but are counting on the cops and the
prosecutors to believe no one would go to such extremes when a simple
bullet to the head in a dark alley would have sufficed. The narrative
occasionally makes tangential detours that don't really add any value
to the story, and the ending, which has screenplay written all over it
(so to speak), isn't nearly as polished as it could have been. Overall
though, Shooters & Chasers
is a cleverly developed mystery with compelling characters that is
thoroughly entertaining.
Special thanks to Lenny Kleinfeld for providing an ARC of Shooters & Chasers for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read Shooters & Chasers? How would you rate it?
Novels by this author …
Shooters & Chasers
Five Star (Hardcover), January 2009
ISBN-10: 1-59414-739-6 (1594147396)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59414-739-5 (9781594147395)
Omnimystery keywords for Shooters & Chasers ...
Location(s) referenced: Chicago, Los Angeles.
