Adams’s debut offers a gritty noir journey through the darkest corners of Edge City, a hard-edged place of seedy bars, luxurious mansions, organized crime, and a private detective protagonist so hardboiled he greets a cop he used to know with “Who's the unlucky stiff on your list today?”

 

Haunted by loss and his “self-perceived” failings, Eli has retreated from polite society, sobriety, and financial solvency, but his luck seems to change when young Brad Winston, scion of Edge City’s wealthiest and most powerful man, wants to hire Eli to help find his missing girlfriend, a young woman whom the elder Winstons want out of Brad’s life.

 

A deep love for voice-driven crime fiction powers the novel. Eli’s search for young Josie will of course lead him to dark secrets, other missing girls, and the possibility of redemption.

 

Shining light in the shadows leads to danger, and soon Eli is taking bullets and narrowly escaping attempts on his life. Adams finds fresh angles on genre staples, balancing familiar scenes, like the detective enduring a beating or getting shot at in his office, with welcome surprises. Eli's world is dark and jagged, all rough edges and raw nerves, but readers who relish noir vibes and language will have a ball.

 

Of Eli’s dive-bar hangout, Adams writes, “It attracts hipster wannabes and the people the hipsters wanna be.”

 

The prose is mostly strong, even epigrammatic, though it leans heavily on similes, some strained: “Winnie’s face looked like a freshly moisturized alabaster.”

 

Eli is a flawed but sympathetic protagonist who struggles with his past without any real plans for the future. His outs are alcohol, cigarettes, and the distractions of charming barfly Gail, who sometimes shares his bed but has no real place of permanence in his life—and who is interesting enough that readers will wonder why this pseudo-relationship with Eli suits her life at this time.

 

There is much promise in these characters and their city for future entries to explore.

 

Takeaway: Memorably hardboiled detective debut, in a classic noir vein.

 

Perfect for fans of Raymond Chandler, Robert B. Parker, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly James Kestrel, Lawrence Block and Ross Macdonald. 

- BookLife Review