Tyler Palewhite: Soft-Boiled Detective

This is a very good book. Apparently self published, but why I don't know it is certainly good enough to any publisher's interest. the story is about a computer program salesman turned mystery writer. When he can't sell his book to any publisher he hits on the promotional idea of promoting himself as a detective to enhance his image as a mystery writer. And the fun begins! Palewhite is a bit of a schmuck and soon gets in over his head. The story moves fast and it is fun reading. I look forward to more from Joseph Valentinetti and Tyler Palewhite.

Tyler is truly a "soft boiled detective". I hate to compare him to Barney Fife but he comes mighty close. As a struggling writer Tyler decides that he needs to improve his biographical sketch that appears in his book. So he becomes a detective. It seems easy enough and it does add to his aura as an author.

At a book signing he is approached by a lady who needs his services. He accepts the case of returning her daughter who has not been returned from a visit with her father. Tyler and the friends he enlists to help him come up with an elaborate plan to kidnap the child back only to find out that the client has been lying to Tyler and he must work to undo what he has done.

It is an interesting read and gives one the idea that one needs to show more be careful with what he claims to be. A little detective work into the background of the client would have sufficed to save everyone a lot of trouble. Very good. show less

3.5 STARS - I won this book on Library Thing, along with the author's other short (short) story, Naming the Moon. This story was a big improvement over Naming the Moon in terms of style and substance. I took a half star off because I think the characters could have been developed so much more, the story fleshed out a little better, and also because the e-book formatting was a little off-kilter sometimes (no breaks in the writing for scene changes can be a bit disorienting when you're in the flow of reading and there's an abrupt shift). But this was still a good read - the author has talent that I expect he will be able to develop more fully in the years to come.

Just finished reading Tyler Palewhite, softboiled detective.
Wow, the ending was pretty intense! I liked this book, I felt Tyler was a
sympathetic character who grew throughout the story, and would be
interested in reading his further adventures. As an author myself, I can sympathize with Tyler's struggles to get his book published and the falsehood he resorts to to lift his novel out of the slushpile. The rocky transitions between scene changes could be easily solved by double spacing, ## signs and the like.

This was a quick and fun read, however there were several problems. Perhaps it was the e-book formatting but is was quite jolting to jump from scene to scene with no text breaks.
The character of Tyler had potential but seemed to have immediate pity parties when his own inexperience and incompetence failed him. Only then would he proceed.
The fate of some characters was left hanging and altogether the story did not flow well. And is it just me or are any other readers tired of reading about writers as characters in books?

I didn't finish this book. I had been expecting something along the lines of a tongue-in-cheek mockery of a noir detective story. Instead to me the story resembled (the book version of) one of those artsy films about the minutiae of some poor sad bloke's daily life. Unfortunately, books and films like that aren't really to my taste so this story will have to be enjoyed by someone else.

this was a book from Member Giveaway. I have to say, this was not, for me, a great book. It was short at least but probably should have been a little longer. It sometimes changed focus from one scene to a different location or group of people between one paragraph and the next without a word or notice to say that it had so i'd be confused at first thinking what just happened and where am I and who are these people and where did they come from before i realized we're now in a new place, sometimes even a new day.

It's about a salesman who isn't all that good at his job. He wants to be a writer and has penned a book about a Private Investigator but can't seem to get anyone to publish it until he pretends to be a detective in real life. He show more decides to take on a case so he can at least pretend and, flushed with the success of that case though only solved by his somewhat bumbling methods, he takes on another when asked by a beautiful woman with whom he instantly falls in love. She's not what she seems and her story isn't either. You can tell that straight away but he can't. He gets in over his head quickly and is snarled in a murder and kidnapping debacle.

I found the plot predictable, the writing too. The shift in focus was sometimes abrupt and distracting. There were chapter breaks, why not do it for those focus shifts, too?

I later realized that it was sort of like watching something on tv or in a movie but there, you have the visual and you can tell that you've changed a scene. On screen, things don't feel as rushed or abrupt but when you are reading it, it doesn't work very well. You need something to indicate the shift in focus, whether a short sentence, a new chapter or even little dots or graphics between those two paragraphs that give you more of a sense of separation.

The other thing that felt out of place were two sex scenes. The scenes themselves probably weren't out of place, but I don't think they needed to be quite so graphic. They didn't seem to match the tone of rest of the book so stumbling into these almost felt gratuitous.

The book has potential and probably would work well as a screenplay since it's written sort of like that but without the direction notes. The characters are a bit stereotype, the bumbling writer/salesman/detective, the faithful coworker who secretly loves him, the beautiful villain, her violent yet sometimes gentle co-hort, (a bit inconsistent, that). I think this was supposed to be a comic farce but the drawbacks took away from that element. It wasn't bad, but it could have been better. show less