Customer Reviews

The Big Fix (A Moses Wine Mystery)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I should start by saying that am a huge fan of Private Investigator fiction and that this was my first Moses Wine novel. Apparently, author Roger L. Simon was trying to update the classic Phillp Marlowe type P.I. story to the hip and strange place that Southern California (especially the criminal underworld) had become by the early 1970s. "The Big Fix" has a very strong sense of place and time, and today reads like a snapshot of that very confused era. However, as a mystery, the plot is fairly pedestrian. Set on the backdrop of a political campaign (though we never meet the candidate himself), one of Wine's ex-girlfriends is murdered shortly after bringing him a case. However, Wine doesn't seem particularly outraged and pursues the case with a curious detachment. Along the way he encounters a cornucopia of early 70s revolutionaries and hippies. Ultimately though, the climax is a disappointment not worthy of the story's buildup.

Simon has all the moves of a classic P.I. writer. Wine is appropriately cynical, hardedged and wise-cracking. What he needs is a truly Marlowe-esque plot to sink his teeth into.

Roger Simon has a terrific sense of how our political identities are rooted in so much more (or less) than the depth or purity of our ideas. We identify with those who are the models for the kind of person we think we are, or the group to which we want to belong, and in the process we lose sight of our real political objectives, if we ever knew what they were in the first place. This book explores this dilemma for Moses Wine as he grapples with his own personal history of the sixties in investigating the murder of the woman who symbolizes both his love and politics at that time. Now he must ask again, what really motivates our search for truth? I won't impose my solution to this fascinating mystery.

I bought this book because I saw it among a list of the 100 best detective stories. I knew nothing about the author or the subject. I read this book straight through in just a few hours. The writing flows very easily. His casually tossed off descriptions of place and setting are terrific. I'm not entirely in the camp of the perspective of the main character, he's a liberal while I'm a libertarian but there's a lot of overlap. The story could be enjoyed by anyone other than a diehard opposite of Moses Wine, though, because the perspective isn't put across obnoxiously. I'd really like to have given this book four and a half stars. My only reservation was that some aspects of the plot didn't quite work for me. It was still a very entertaining read and one I'd recommend to anyone.

superior private eye mystery with the full trappings of the era

The book iw written for the most part in the style of classic private detective stories in the first person and in short, terse sentences, but it just doesn't jell.
An ex girlfriend of PI Moses Wine brings him a case set in the middle of a political campaign. She is murdered soon after, so Wine becomes involved, meeting an assortment of ageing hippes who are still chasing the dreams of the sixties with hash and booze. I found it a complete dud !