The Coast Road (Cliff Hardy series)
After a couple of decades, your typical mystery series tends to get a little stale. But there are exceptions: Westlake's Dortmunder novels (35 years), McBain's 87th Precinct series (49 years), and Corris' Cliff Hardy series, which is now at the quarter-century mark and still going strong. Unlike the oft-reprinted novels of Westlake and McBain, however, Australian Corris' work is not widely available in the U.S. The publication of this representative Hardy novel should help change that. InThe Coast Road, a wealthy man dies, and his daughter asks Sydney PI Hardy to find out whether it really was an accident, as the police have ruled. Does the daughter know something, or is she merely jealous of her father's second wife, who now stands to inherit a fortune? Before he can get a handle on the case, another one drops into his lap, and this one, involving a missing person, hits Cliff on an emotional as well as a professional level. The novel is sharply written in the classic gumshoe tradition, and it generates enough energy to keep readers plowing forward.David PittCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved