Thursday, September 12, 2019

Shattered Angel: Morelli’s Private Inquiries, Book 1 by Baird Nuckolls and James R. Sands


(pb; 2019)

From the back cover

“Set amid the growing roar of the 1920’s, a beautiful young flapper named Angel has hired Adriano Morelli, an ex-cop turned private detective, to follow her cheating husband. When Morelli steps into the rarified air of a Fifth Avenue apartment looking for his client, what he discovers changes the stakes of the game.

“He now has a murder to solve while staying one step ahead of the cops. And with a history of failure, especially when it comes to beautiful women, Morelli is hoping to redeem himself for past sins. From the Cotton Club and the city’s speakeasies to the Polo Grounds where heavyweight Jack Dempsey faces his greatest opponent, the life of New York comes right off the pages of the newspapers of the day. . .”


Review

Shattered is an excellent, burn-through pulp novel with all the best, classic-for-the-genre elements driving the characters toward their familiar but still-involving actions and destinations. It is a vivid entry in the private dick genre─it made this reader feel as if he were transported back to New York in the 1920s. (That said, its immersive feel is not achieved by slowing down its relatively fast pace, a good, all-too-rare skill.)  Shattered is worth owning.

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