Customer Reviews

The Dark Streets: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries)

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I happily welcome my favorite LA mystery character's return in this book that deals with very contemporary issues and some very old ones. This time he meets the LA Korean community as well as tangling with our Homeland Security guardians. The social issues of the Korean "comfort women" are mixed with the gang culture of East LA. This all adds to the highly engaging soap opera of the lives of the other wonderfully drawn continuing characters. I do worry about Maeve though!! If you're a John Shannon fan as I am, don't miss this one.

I read a positive review of Mr. Shannon's Jack Liffey Series in the New York or LA Times some time last year. I was sorry I had not come across the series before as I am very fond of mysteries that provide a strong sense of place e.g. Spencer and Boston. I began with the Liffey mystery Concrete River and then because I liked that one quite a lot bought the others - mostly going book by book through the series. I have been increasingly put off but the family stuff however. It just doesn't work for me. I am totally in favor of sub-plots (and like at least one or two to be included) but Mr. Liffey's ex-wife and his reckless obnoxious daughter just don't work for me. I inwardly groan every time they show up on the page. The Dark Streets is interesting and overall quite a good read, but the teen daughter's involvement with the Latino Gang-banger was disgusting and tedious. And now she is pregnant! (How dumb can this girl be!) I anticipate the (dumb obnoxious) daughter and her Gang-banger paramour to have an ever increasing presence in the Liffey series and perhaps their child will be included in the plot also. So unfortunately the Dark Streets and pregnant Maeve have ended my romance with this series.

"The Dark Streets" is John Shannon's ninth novel but only the first that I have read featuring Jack Liffey, a street-wise sleuth who specializes in finding missing persons. The plot begins simply enough but soon gets convoluted as Jack's search for a missing Korean girl, Soon-Lin Kim, suddenly leads to his "disappearance" due to an over-zealous Homeland Security group (ISOC) and ultimately leads to a Waco/Ruby Ridge-like confrontation in the desert near El Centro.

I surmise that long time readers of this series know the characters in some depth and Shannon does seem to expend considerable effort in character development; however, I never became seriously attached to any of the characters and felt his 17 year old daughter, Maeve, in a ludicrous subplot, was a witless undisciplined dunce.

There is some nimble plotting involving several Los Angeles based cultures that come into conflict including Mexican gangs, Korean nationals, white suburbanites, and idealistic young revolutionaries. Some of this cultural conflict is juxtaposed within chapters that seem to compare the experiences of Koreans in wartime drama with Mexicans in current street war drama. The whole subplot dealing with the atrocity surrounding the Korean "comfort women" exploited by the Japanese army in WWII is well woven into the fabric of the plot. However, the Mexican gang life subplot involving Maeve hit this reader as hard-to-believe gullibility on the part of a "with-it" 17 year old.

This reader found the pacing to be somewhat slow and the plotting, in general, certainly without enough action or excitement to be classed as either action-packed or as a thriller of any kind. The climax and denouement of the book was also disappointing as the whole buildup of the plot, somewhat tedious at times, was wrapped up in just a few pages with multiple plot lines either summarily tied up, ignored, or left for the next installment. For example, the entire kidnapping and torturing of Jack segment of the book was ignored in the aftermath of the climax.

My initial experience with John Shannon and his Jack Liffey character was less than I had anticipated. Those who enjoy the Doc Ford, Jack Reacher, or Dave Robicheaux characters and the mileux in which they operate will likely not find Jack Liffey as interesting...but I am sure he is not meant to be. I am just suggesting that Jack will appeal to a different reader than will the others mentioned.

I am normally a fan of mysteries and thrillers that are heavy on character development and that let me share in the main characters' life as it develops from book to book. In this book, however, the plot suffers - it seems to be a token side-issue compared to the story of Korean "comfort women" and of Liffey's daughter Maeve.

So -- the biggest problem, as has been noted vociferously by other reviewers, is Maeve. Maeve has generally been depicted as a smart, not particularly rebellious teenager. And this girl decides to turn herself into a gangsta moll? Puh-leeze. She must be aware that the lives of these gang members are going nowhere (unlike hers) and I can't see her longing to "fit in" with them. Furthermore, I can't imagine her being dumb enough to jump into a sexual relationship with one of them, and not use protection against pregnancy and AIDs. This isn't the '50s!

Although the passages about the Korean "comfort women" were interesting, they were left adrift in the text -- all they did was justify the work of the missing Korean teenager. I expected a lot more relating to the post-war actions of the Japanese and saving the residence hotel, but none of it was there. Just a tiny and ineffective group of kids.

I expected more.

Jack Liffey doen't get Korean clients very often, but when an eighteen-year-old Korean girl goes missing, Jack is hired to bring her home. Liffey has his rules--he doesn't bring anyone home to abuse--but he normally gets the job done. Only something goes very wrong with this job almost from the beginning. The girl, Soon-Lin Kim had been involved in protests against a Los Angeles development that would, she thought, eliminate housing for a number of older people. To add insult to injury, the company behind the development was a Korean conglomerate that had once been involved in supplying Korean 'comfort women' (forced prostitutes) to the Japanese armies of World War II. At least one of the residents was a former comfort woman.

While Liffey looks for a missing girl, his own daughter, only a year or so younger than Soon-Lin, is having a crisis of her own. Her hormones are running strong and she's attracted to the gang member who lives next door to Liffey. Liffey is too busy to see Maeve's danger signs and when his girlfriend urges him to talk to his daughter, he accepts her assurance that all is well.

As Liffey investigates, he falls into the post-9/11 world where a single word from someone can lead to being disappeared.

Author John Shannon writes compellingly of the multiple cultures whose uneasy mingling makes up the culture of Los Angeles. Mexican gangs, first and second generation Koreans, and cops who sometimes seem to form a gang of their own fill the pages. Jack Liffey himself is a memorable character. Although he projects an air of cynicism, it's clear that he still hopes to make a difference--if not to the world at large, at least for those young people whom he rescues.

THE DARK STREETS is an uncomfortable book. In one scene, Gloria views a blackboard with the words 'THE SECRET TO COMBATING GANGS IS...' and 'CLICHE OF WEEK HERE.' That blackboard thematically captures the novel. From both the right and left, violent men attempt to apply simple solutions to complex problems--and Jack Liffey becomes the target for both.

John Shannon writes a complex and compelling mystery, where the past never seems quiet and where the future can be changed only in small steps. This is good stuff.

John Shannon's Jack Liffey series tries to say something about the contemporary human condition while following Liffey who ekes out a bare living trying to find missing people. In this episode Soon-Lin Kim, a Korean-American film student and political activist, is missing. Her father hires Jack to find her. Soon Liffey is immersed in the angst of the now elderly former "comfort women", Korean women who were forced to service the soldiers in the Japanese army during World War II. In a sub-plot, Liffey's 17-year-old daughter Maeve, goes hormonal with a Latino gang member. In another sub-plot Liffey's sexual relationship with a LAPD detective also suffers angst. The novel ends with a climactic battle in a mysterious desert compound.

Jack Liffey is an incredibly inept pseudo-P.I. who always tries to do the right thing, usually for a client who is as poor as he is. His paranoia invariably gets in the way of his efforts. Usually the storytelling is good enough to get us past our irritation with our hero who always does it the long and hard way. In this book the subplots involving Maeve and his policewoman girlfriend read like outtakes from previous books that were removed in the editing, and don't relate well to the main plot. Maybe he had to write a minimum number of pages and couldn't get there on plot alone? This is definitely one of the weaker entries in this usually entertaining series.