The Twenty-Year Death, Publisher: Hard Case Crime, Hardcover $25.99, Kindle $7.79, 700 pages
This Kindle book has an unusual form. There are three connected crime stories and each part is written in the style of a famous mystery story author. The first one was suppose to be that of Georges Simenon (to be honest I found it tiresome). The second is Raymond Chandler-ish. And the last owes much to Jim (The Killer Inside Me) Thompson.
The first part brings in someone new at the end of the book who is responsible for the death of French prisoners found dead outside of a prison. The second, has a murdered who is the deranged son of the head of a movies studio. Again, we don’t get real scenes with him and don’t much care because we’re not personally connected with the central character. The last story is the one that works, we care about the narrator and the resolution fits the crime (he accidentally killed his estranged son).
