Review: Solid, but Unoriginal Private Eye Novel
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 22, 2013
David Chill has written a short, entertaining, yet totally unoriginal, private eye novel that adopts all the genre's clichés and comes across as a slick episode of an old-time TV series like Mannix.The hero, Burnside, is a fortyish ex-college football player, ex-cop turned PI who is hired to investigate the mysterious death of a recently graduated player at a fictionalized version of UCLA. The dead man fell or was thrown out a high-rise apartment building during his brother's bachelor party. Suspects include a number of his ex-teammates, as well as the strippers and hangers on who were at the party.Although it's a short book that actually succeeds fairly well at disguising the identity of the killer, Chill trots out a whole bunch of predictable plot twists, including numerous (albeit entertaining) asides about Los Angeles and college football, a car chase, a new girlfriend, and about five fist fights. Chill doesn't break any new ground here, but he writes well and knows how to construct a plot. As a result, the book moves quickly and is never boring. It's a good way for fans of the hardboiled genre to spend a long night or a short weekend.