15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The bookman goes to the track and loses his...., July 15, 2007
This review is from: The Bookwoman's Last Fling (Cliff Janeway Novels) (Paperback)
The following exchange between Cliff Janeway and Erin, his significant other, takes place near the end of "The Bookwoman's Last Fling." Erin speaks first:
"This is probably not something we want to do on the phone," she said. "But we do need to talk.... Oh, it's the same old stuff. We made some big and glorious plans for our life together in books. I still think it would be a great life, except for one thing. You don't really want it. It took me a while to understand that."
I didn't know what to say, probably because I was afraid she was right....
"What you really want is to be a cop again," she said.
"Well, you don't have to worry about that. It'll never happen."
"Oh, my dear, it has [italicized] happened. You're never going to be a bookman in the upper tier. You don't have it in you. You want to be a cop; you're still a cop at heart."
[Pages 456-7, paperback edition]
Now if you reframe that passage slightly, it becomes a dialogue between John Dunning and his readers. Dunning, I think, doesn't really want to be the major figure in crime fiction that his first two books suggested he might be. He doesn't have it in him. He wants to be an ordinary, hard-boiled detective writer; he's still a hard-boiled detective writer at heart.
And when he says that'll never happen. We readers are bound to declare, "Oh, John, it has [italicized] happened."
Consider this book. Dunning obviously wanted to write about a hard-boiled guy snooping around a racetrack. On the other hand, he, his agent and his publisher, were fully aware that his paying fans wanted a story about books and bookmen. So Dunning wrote his racetrack story, but he perfunctorily bracketed it with the beginning and the end of a bookman story. The end bracket is particularly obvious. Cliff Janeway moves from the track world to the book world at the beginning of Chapter 31, page 446 of the paperback edition. (The story ends at page 507, after the apprehension of a villain. The arbitrary ending of the book almost equals "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" in generating disbelief, but without Agatha Christie's stunning skill in overcoming it.)
Dunning bends a dutiful knee towards things bookish by muttering about bibliomania. But what he is really talking about is collecting-mania. Books are a mere McGuffin in "The Bookwoman's, Etc." With only cosmetic changes, the mania could have involved paintings, Tiffany cigarette cases or any other collectible. If P.G. Wodehouse had written this book, he might have called it "The Creamer-Collector's Last Fling"--books out, silver cow creamers in.
I'm giving this book just two stars, not because it is bad, for it is all right in the sense that any run of the mill product is all right. No, I'm downgrading the rating because the book is only all right. Dunning once demonstrated that he could be something quite out of and above the herd. This book denies that potential and his promise as a true artist. It fails, not so much the readers as Dunning himself.
Two disappointed stars.
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Janeway series should end here, February 11, 2007
John Dunning wrote a couple of my favorite quiet mysteries with the first books in this series. If he had left it as a trilogy, I think that these books would have gone down as classics of their era. However, Dunning has persisted in turning this into a series that just has no legs what-so-ever. I have noticed while reading all of Dunnings work that Characters are not one of his strong points. Dunning tells a great story, and has the ability to incorporate an archetype that he has used in every one of his novels. The archetype is not a bad one, and it suffices to push along what is usually a pretty darn good yarn. The reason I am pointing this opinion of mine out is that for the first time ever, I have noticed a devolution of a character in the hands of an author. From the first book in this series, to Bookwomans Fling, Janeway has lost a lot of his allure. I dont think that we been given any insights at all into the make-up of this man, and because of that this book suffers.
You might disagree with me in what I just said, however I urge you to go back and flip through "Booked to Die", notice the depth of character beyond what you might have pulled in if you have watched many Noir flicks or the 50's or read books such as Maltese Falcon. Theirs not much to Janeway. But its ok in that book because the story is so original. Now look at Bookwomans Last Fling and you have exactly the same character. Janeway has not grown, and Dunning has not given us anything to feed upon.
Lastly, I think that the point I am trying to make here is best observed when you take a look at Dunnings female characters. Every single one of them is as thin as a gust of wind. They are all pretty much the same. Compare Janeways growth over these books and then look at Matt Scudder who appears in some of Lawrence Blocks books. Night and Day.
The reason I am so engrossed with the unconcern Dunning has over the development of Janeway is that his stories feel more and more boxed in as time goes on. How many stories about old collectible books can you write. Heck I love to collect first editions myself, but I dont want to read Dunnings attempts to tie a clever series into them anymore.
I sort of think of Dunnings Janeway series as being a little like Dick Francis' racetrack books. Francis constantly has the same theme and same character from one book to the next. He has the same problem as Dunning. Only Francis has found a way around this by putting that character into a different form with every book. Each time he turns him into a stock-broker or a detective, or something and then the reader has the joy of watching a good story unfold while learning a bit of the characters new back story.
This book felt forced through-out. I would like to read something more like "booked to die" again from Dunning. I want the great story that starts in one place and ends somewhere totally unexpected. I dont want to read the story told here that is as stale as can be. Enough Dunning. Your a gifted story teller. Start telling stories again.
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21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
John Dunning knows how to craft a good mystery, May 30, 2006
Denver book buyer Cliff Janeway has been called to Idaho to assess the estate collection of H.R. and Candice Geiger, both deceased. But of course, the task is not that simple. The estate manager's demeanor runs the gamut from vague to downright surly. H.R.'s books are at the main house, while Candice's are with her daughter Sharon. Someone seems to have been stealing selected volumes from some series runs over the years. The three Geiger brothers are each crazy in their own way, or worse. Oh, and then there's that little matter about whether or not Candice was murdered so long ago. Janeway approaches it all with his usual calculating manner, using his ex-cop intuition to decide how to best be involved with the books, the loose ends, and with this seemingly dysfunctional family.
And since the Geiger business is racehorses, Janeway gets his foot in that barn door, too. He follows the investigation to a racetrack in California, where he takes on work as a hot walker. Here he (and we readers) learn more about the scene behind the races. Before too long, we're all comfortable with hanging out with the ginny and the bug boy and tackling the endless duty of mucking out the stables. Cliff's girlfriend, bookstore partner and lawyer Erin, joins him for part of the investigation and is accidentally put into harm's way. The true identity of the perpetrator remains a mystery to us until the last 23 pages, when most savvy readers will get a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs, and no one will be able to warn Cliff of the danger ahead. We just have to hang on and hope that the good guy prevails.
Granted, this might not be the strongest episode in the Cliff Janeway series, but it's still an enjoyable read and is heads above many other contemporary mysteries available today. The dialogue advances the plot, the description of the racetrack venue is fresh and intriguing, and the mystery and its action keep us turning pages. I heartily recommend new readers to the series to delve into other Dunning books. It's always a treat to spend time with Cliff Janeway. He's the West Coast answer to Bernie Rhodenbarr.
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