Customer Reviews

CHEERIO KILLINGS

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To me, Doug Allyn is one of the many underrated authors. I have enjoyed everything he has written, but this is not my favorite. These are not sensitive, new age cops; these are hard-bitten, street-smart, been-there-done-that cops. The dialogue, language and racial slurs are explicit but realistic. Garcia is a Viet Nam vet who accepts that he and his African-American partner were hired to fill ethnic quotas. My biggest problem was his absolute conviction that he knew who the killer, even though evidence didn't support it. The actual killer comes as a surprise, but it was a twist that just didn't feel right. I did enjoy the reason for the book's name, though. I believe this was his debut novel, and it shows. I'd recommend skipping the two Lupe Garcia books and move straight to Mitch Mitchell.

In this average mystery, Doug Allyn's first novel "the Cheerio Killings", a gung-ho Detriot cop tries to find a serial killer, and finds that a mysterious man who may not be who he says he is named Lamont Yarborough may be his man. Yarborough has a tenuous enough link to the slayings, and he has a record of violence against women, but nobody else thinks Yarborough is the killer. Has Lupe Garcia, the cop, been blinded by his desire to get Yarborough? Who the killer is is a big surprise, and things don't seem to resolve just right. There is promise here, but Allyn falls short here.