Review: Hardboiled Noir.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 31, 2012
'The morning I went to hell I was passed out drunk.'This how Pearce Hansen's fantastic Stagger Bay kicks off and it really doesn't let up from then on in.Markus, Stagger Bay's unlucky protagonist, is dragged out of his booze induced oblivion by a posse of angry cops, who throw him in the slammer and charge him with a particularly horrible murder.A crime that Markus didn't commit. Not that his innocence  matters, because Markus, a man with a criminal  past, has been so perfectly framed that he ends up being convicted of the crime and spending seven years in prison - until he's cleared due to DNA evidence.Trying to go straight, he wanders into a shoot out and ends up becoming a hero.And that's just the start of this breathless, breath taking novel.With Stagger Bay, Hansen has masterfully combined noir lyricism with muscular, hard-boiled storytelling.Stagger Bay's twist and turns are gripping, the dialogue is sharp, the characters are realistic and the prose is beautifully fluid.Stagger Bay not only lives up to the promise of Pearce Hanson whipcrack début, Street Raised, but it even exceeds that book's high standards.Stagger Bay is a major novel by one of the finest writers around.