Shortcut Man: A Novel by p.g. sturges
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Private Eye novels are my genre. They have been ever since I asked my mom (a librarian) for the kind of
mystery novels where they talked about "dames" or something like that.
My mom said immediately, "oh, they're called hard-boiled detective stores" and pointed me to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and the rest was history.
20-ish years later, I try to keep track of the private eye genre. One of the most straightforward ways of doing this, of course, is
keeping track of the Shamus awards. I mean, that's the awards from the Private Eye Writers of america.
Seems like it ought to be a good place to start.
Problem is, most of the Shamus award nominees suck. But still, I keep an eye on them, read the ones
that seem interesting, and occasionally I find a sleeper hit.
This book is not that sleeper hit, but nor does it suck, so I'll let it slide.
The plot is straightforward: The main character is a shortcut man, someone who solves problems, not by doing any detecting per se, but
more like by breaking noses and legs.
The good news is, he's funny. The plot moves swiftly, after an unrelated introduction to show how the character does his business, our hero
the detective is asked to determine whether a porn producers wife is cheating on him.
The wife in question happens to already be the detectives girlfriend. (So, as mysteries go,
this ones a dud. but as a crime novel it works ok.)
The author plays it close to the noirish tropes. The wife/girlfriend is a femme fatale of
the first order, and ancillary characters are engaging enough.
In the end though, there's not much *there* there. If there are grander adventures for the
character in place, i'd be interested in seeing it, but for the moment this is a light, fun, and substanceless noirish thriller,
heavy on the noir, light on the thrill.
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