The Case of the Death of a Ladies' Man

Many years ago I went through one of those reader phases where I deliberately sought out weird titles just because there's nothing better than a quest. (Okay well any excuse to haunt bookshops and secondhand shops...) So THE CASE OF THE DEATH OF A LADIES' MAN appealed if for no other reason than a bit of nostalgia for that fun (and the sudden realisation that it might be time to revive it!)

The book started out with quite a bang, and the details of a corpse found in a King's Cross alleyway that is guaranteed to make you sit up, pay attention, and work out very rapidly that there's a sly and dry sense of humour at work here. As well as a distinct requirement for readers who are up for a bit of slang translation, and a leaning towards the show more odd. Spread like Vegemite from the knife of somebody who obviously has no idea. You know the sort - makes you snicker even though you know you shouldn't...

As required for something with such a huge hat tip to the golden age of pulp fiction, we've got a hero (Mr Rainbow) who does a fine, and rather elaborate line in wisecracks and asides to camera, many of which are particularly Australian. We've also got a female sidekick who might not necessarily be on the side of the angels, an ex-wife and child, an ex-colleague and born again Christian, a heap of pissed off local gangsters, and a boat on the loose in Sydney Harbour. It's almost impossible to pick a timeframe in which this book is set, and it doesn't matter a damn. Everything seems to slot together, much like the wide boy in gun sights alluded to in the blurb.

On the dark side of funny THE CASE OF THE DEATH etc etc had me laughing out loud at the most inappropriate points, and was considerably more fun than I thought it was going to be. Whilst it is a hat-tip to the old pulp style, it's got enough originality and smarts to wipe away any suspicion of a crutch. You'll need to have one of those daft, slightly silly senses of humour and approach this as being from the entertaining, rather than illuminating side of crime fiction, which is no bad thing. There's an earlier book in the series - THE CASE OF THE HOOD WITH NO HANDS. Haven't read that one yet but I'm going to rectify that the next time I need an antidote to the dark and dire.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/case-death-ladies-man-cs-boag show less

Review Copy

Mister Rainbow in the Case of the Death of a Ladies' Man is the second in s series of mystery novels covering the colors of the rainbow. This one happens to be orange. I admit to not having read the first book and found that I was not hampered by the lack of the experience.

Death of a Ladies Man is not a part of my regular reading material. I tend to stay in the Horror/Dark Fiction category, but this was a case of an author reaching out to me with a request for a fair and honest review and after looking into the book and seeing it described as, "In the great tradition of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe," I was more than willing to take a chance.

It's true, there are moments where there was an show more ambiance of noir in Boag's writing, with worthy lines like, "Thomas L. Tycho was everybody's enemy, a trickster who played one trick too many, on one too many people, a dirty dealer who dealt one dirty deal to far, a wide boy wide enough to keep himself alive until the moment he made the mistake of wide boys evthe world over -- and that was not getting a whole lot narrower when the gun went off."

There were some other gems. Since his divorce, Rainbow's been living on a boat he named Wooden No as in the answer to the question, "What's the name of your boat?" Clever.

However, as I got further into the story, it just seem like the writer was trying too hard, much of the writing seemed forced; good noir should seem effortless, even though it's not. Plus, I found the repetitive use of strange words to be a bit annoying. Words like "phyzog" for face. I was able to look that one up. Others, like, "porphyry," as in "something in the porphyry of my senses." I don't believe it was a proofreading issue as the book is quite clean in that regard. It could be the character subbing this word for "periphery" in an attempt to be cute, but it just didn't work for me. And then there's the use of "fenetre" for window every time. Why can't a window just be a window?

Ok, let me step down from my soap box. If you can get by all of the stange writing quirks, there is a good story here and for that, I liked it and maybe you will too. show less