Jitterbug

Confessional: sometimes reading Doyle gives me the sensation of being dropped into a foreign city at rush hour. People are buzzing with energy all around me, all coming and going, going and coming. Worst case in this scenario, I'm blindfolded and spun around until I can't walk straight. There are so many characters and side plots I'm bumping into everything. So far, Jitterbug is my favorite. It is the least chaotic. I like the viewpoint from the serial killer masquerading as a soldier. Police think the killings are mafia related because someone is targeting citizens who hoard ration stamps. Is it a punishment of sorts? I also liked the time period of life during World War II, a time when desegregation was an attempt to support the war show more effort, yet racism and prejudice still thrive. Some of the murders are a little hard to take because Estleman lets you into the victim's life enough so that you begin to care. You learn a little about their struggles before they die and that makes their demise a little harder to take. (Kind of like Game of Thrones when you like a character and are completely bummed when they are killed off too early in the series.) True to form, Estleman brings back well known characters, like my favorite Connie Minor.
Be warned - Estleman uses language of the time to describe ethnic groups. It isn't always pretty. show less

When I announced on a mystery listserv that I'd be reading Estleman's "Novel of Detroit" as my Michigan book, I got an email with some excellent suggestions of books set in other parts of the state with the opinion "Detroit isn't Michigan" or words to that effect. I do intend to read one or two of the suggestions, and with a more contemporary setting, since Detroit in 1943 probably bears even less resemblance to Michigan today.

I'd characterize [b:Jitterbug|8682|Jitterbug Perfume|Tom Robbins|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165721159s/8682.jpg|1105831] as a "serial killer thriller," which is far from my favorite type of book; but it's also historical and that went some way to redeeming it for me. The killer is introduced immediately, show more and in periodic visits to his thoughts and actions we get some insight into the roots of his psychological deviance, but he is in no way made sympathetic. On his trail are Lt. Max Zagreb and his squad, known as the Four Horsemen. They are the Racket Squad of the Detroit PD, and they're involved because the killer seems to be targeting hoarders of ration stamps. The police department is understaffed and filled with 4-Fs and retirees, and Zagreb himself sometimes talks of joining the Navy. Lacking the manpower for a thorough search, Zagreb enlists the help of a local gangster, but the gangster's scenes seem to be put in more as atmosphere and character study that as a way to move the plot along.

In fact, although I enjoyed this book, one could lose sight of the plot in all the atmosphere and historical detail. There must be about a dozen brand names or store names per page; no one ever just checks his watch, it's always a Wittnauer, Timex, Bulova or whatever. There are scenes and even whole subplots that appear to be in the book to give a complete picture of Detroit, 1943. I ended up with a very ambivalent feeling about [b:Jitterbug|8682|Jitterbug Perfume|Tom Robbins|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165721159s/8682.jpg|1105831]. Because I enjoy social history, I could appreciate the excellent description of the Great Migration of southern blacks to the northern industrial cities (another subplot with relatively little relevance to the main story, but which has some of the most engaging characters in the book). But the connection (stolen ration stamps) of the gangsters and the African-Americans to the main mystery is rather contrived and in the end leads to nothing. I'd give this book A- for atmosphere and setting, B for characters and C for plot.

I do have to mention one mistake so unnecessary that it took both me and my husband right out of the story. Lt. Zagreb realizes a key element of the killer's m.o. when he walks by a newsstand and sees "the July issue of the Saturday Evening Post" with a Rockwell cover depicting half-dressed boys leaving a forbidden swimming hole. In fact, the Saturday Evening Post, true to its name, continued weekly publication during WWII (as did Life, Time, etc.); and the Norman Rockwell cover cited appeared on the Post in 1921. In most books I'd have been more forgiving of an error like this, but when I was being constantly hammered with brand names of watches, exhaustive descriptions of car models, and the like, it was a little much to take. show less

The 6th book in order of publication of Loren D. Estelman's loosely-connected Detroit Crime series, Jitterbug is a look at Detroit in 1943, plagued by a fictional psycho-killer obsessed with life during wartime, who is hunted by a police lieutenant who heads up a special four-man team called the Detroit Racket Squad (dubbed "the Four Horsemen" by the local press); the city is under considerable strain due to the influx of workers from the southern states, lured by high-paying factory jobs in the various plants of "the Arsenal of Democracy" -- the Ku Klux Klan led a walkout by some 25,000 white workers that shut down the Packard plant in April of that year, and the black neighborhood and nightclub district of Paradise Valley was the show more target of racist animosity....

Jitterbug is a quick, entertaining novel that isn't so much a detective story or thriller as it is the story of a city undergoing some major transformations thanks to an influx of government contracts. Detroit itself is the major and most believable character here (contrary to the blurb from the Chicago Tribune on the front cover of the mass market paperback edition). If you have an interest in Detroit and Detroit-area history, Jitterbug will likely tickle your fancy and leave you wanting more -- but more stories of the real people that left their mark, for good or ill, on the city (particularly Harry Bennett, Henry Ford's much-feared hatchet man and de facto leader of the Ford Motor Company), not of Estleman's serviceable but ultimately unremarkable cut-outs. (Although his grizzled reporter Connie Minor, who played memorable roles in Whiskey River and Edsel, has a welcome, Gandalf-like cameo appearance in Chapter Twenty to fill in the readers on a bit of back-story and give the lieutenant some pointers in his murder investigation.)

Estleman trots out so much of his research in the pages of Jitterbug, name-checking an endless stream of 1940s-era athletes, politicians, businessmen, musicians and brand names (Sealtest milk!), that it threatens to turn into a piece for Nostalgia Illustrated; even if you have a liking for such minutiae, it eventually becomes cumbersome: an otaku-esque / Rain Man-like list-making exercise whose ultimate purpose is to beat the reader/listener into submission. One can't help but observe that Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett forbore from such almost ritualistic attempts to ground their narratives to a specific time, and that an overzealous effort to do so comes off at best as special pleading. show less