Harry Dolan (1)

I can't honestly call this a "good" book, but it surely is a fun one -- the literary equivalent of a Snickers bar. This is grim and gritty crime noir, delivered in a deadpan sardonic drawl that never takes itself too seriously.

In a delightfully perverse twist, not only is the principle murder victim a mystery pulp editor -- slain with Shakespeare, no less -- but the entire stable of suspects are themselves mystery writers and genre junkies. Thus, nearly every conversation provides show more opportunity for some stander-by to spin a freshly speculative yarn about how the crime might have been committed -- or would have been, "were we in a mystery novel" -- dealing an ongoing deluge of denouements. Finally, the endgame featured more bait-and-switch false finales than a Peter Jackson movie, keeping the dice rolling until the last page was turned.

Although I've never read any Raymond Chandler or Mickey Spillane, I sense that I owe these hardboiled veterans of lowbrow entertainment a second chance. The book played like a script for recent throwback films like "Shoot'em Up" and "Sin City", with a kitschy, bourbon-flavored masculinity reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's less hallucinogenic moments, or Joseph Garber's guilty pleasure Vertical Run. Casting such roles becomes a generational litmus test: whether you lean toward classics like Humphrey Bogart or their modern incarnations like Bruce Willis, you can easily envision your favorite grizzled straight-man walking the dark alleys of Dolan's twisting plot.

Three stars for philistine fun, with two saved in the cylinder -- "in case things get dicey, or a dame offers to buy me a drink" :-) show less

This is a review of the advanced copy “Very Bad Men” by Harry Dolan for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Anthony Lark’s mission is simple: to kill three of the men involved in a fatally botched bank robbery 17 years ago.

He’s already dispatched two of his targets—an impressive feat, considering that one of them, Terry Dawtrey, is serving 30 years in Kinross Prison—when he identifies them both and announces his third, nurse practitioner Sutton Bell, in an anonymous letter to Loogan show more (Bad Things Happen, 2009), who promptly shares it with his ladylove, police detective Elizabeth Waishkey.

The timely intervention of aspiring tabloid reporter Lucy Navarro saves Bell from Lark’s initial attempt and gives Dolan a chance to fill in some back story.

Lark’s motives are obscure, but they have something to do with U.S. Senate candidate Callie Spencer, whose father Harlan was the Chippewa County Sheriff shot and paralyzed in the bank robbery and whose father-in-law, John Casterbridge, is the senator she hopes to succeed.
Lark keeps coming nerve-wrackingly close to killing Bell; Loogan and Elizabeth keep coming heartbreakingly close to catching Lark; and yet the tale still goes on.

To divulge any more about the plot would spoil some of the dozens of surprises Dolan springs. But it’s not too much to say that nearly every cast member, however minor, is complicit in some crime; that nearly everyone, even though they’re all rooted in excruciatingly familiar generic types, gets a chance to reveal unexpected depths; and that Dolan mixes his pitches with an ace’s judgment, steadily complicating Lark’s quest while keeping the psychology of his characters considerably more plausible than in Loogan’s equally baroque debut.

The rare crime novel with something for everyone who reads crime fiction.

This reviewer gave the book 4 out of 5 stars. show less

I read Bad Things Happen a couple of years ago and was blown away. So when I won an advanced readers copy of Harry Dolan's new book, Last Dead Girl from Library Thing I was overjoyed. While this book features a much younger version of David Loogan, Dolan's ability to layer plot elements into a quilt of intrigue is even more pronounced in this book. Last Dead Girl is a real winner, a book that keeps you guessing and turning pages as it delivers shocks and surprises again and again.

If there's show more a theme to the book it's that chance occurrences can change your life. An argument with your mother, a fall from a tree, a friendly guitarist at a roadside restaurant, driving off in a huff, following someone to see where he's going---you just never know. Dolan uses a scattered timeline to help hide surprises until he wants you to see them---and the technique works amazingly well here. For an author with only a few books under his belt, Dolan has amazing chops and the second half of this novel is a masterly illustration of just how to structure a book. show less

Bad Things Happen all the time, to everyone, but not like they happen to David Loogan. Loogan seems to be a death magnet. It starts when he does a favor for a friend, his employer at the mystery magazine Gray Streets. David helps him dispose of a body. And so it continues with bodies piling up and the enigmatic Loogan asking few questions and revealing even less. Eventually all is resolved as Loogan must unravel a string of unlikely murders connected to the magazine to clear himself.

Dolan show more captures the reader from the very first sentence drawing you into a world which seems to have escaped off the murderous pages of Gray Streets, while tipping his hat to the classic mystery genre. Sly wit, subtle humor, and the slow reveal are a deadly combo, in a good way. Catch this debut novel. show less