Customer Reviews

The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries)

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

 

 

Very interesting and entertaining mystery. And if you think the depiction of what passes for "justice" in Bakersfield is an exaggeration, read Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes' book Mean Justice about DA Ed Jagels and his misuse of power. I live here. It is no distortion.

First off, this is my first Jack Liffey mystery and one of only a handful of books that I have read of its genre. I picked up the book because I saw that it was set in Bakersfield, the city where I grew up, and because the author was going to be speaking at a bookstore near where I live now.

The book is a quick, fun read. While it has some slow parts, it is generally fast-moving and entertaining, never tedious. The author throws in some literary references here and there which are fun to spot and think about, but in general the book reads more like genre fiction. Sometimes the author delves into deeper issues and hits the reader over the head with them. He and, by extension, his protagonist Liffey, could be a bit more subtle. In a few places Liffey seems to make statements that are somewhat obvious--restating what has already happened. This doesn't further the story and sometimes makes it seem as if Shannon is using Liffey to lecture the reader.

Shannon's treatment of Bakersfield is a bit rough-handed, though in many ways its not that far off the mark. I really liked the historical artifacts that he put throughout the book. His use of historical context and fog were very creative and were a highlight of the book. It was fun seeing staples of Bakersfield like the Marketplace, the bluffs, and Oildale in print.

I'm struggling right now to give this book four stars. I think it's more of a 3.5 star book. It's 4 to 5 stars a lot of the way through, but the ending is just plain bad.

Overall, a very readable book that I would recommend to people who read crime noir and anybody who wants to read a book with a lot of the Central Valley in it.

Here is another wonderful book from one of my favorites, John Shannon. This time as well as allowing us to catch up with the ongoing Liffey saga, the author has taken us further afield, leaving LA County for oil-rich Bakersfield. Even though I knew some of the grim Bakersfield history & politics, this book brings it alive & shows how the past affects the present. Most of all though, it's a GREAT read & as usual with Shannon's books, I could hardly put it down!

The author does a great job of flavoring this neo-noir novel with the names, eccentricities, locations, and history of intolerance in and around Bakersfield, California. (Being an outsider who's lived here for many years, his commentary on the "dales" (Stockdale, Rosedale, Oildale...) had me laughing out loud.) Really thought the use of news articles and reports about actual incidents involving KKK, John Birchers, violence against minority groups, worked well.

This book is full of action and some humor, and although it seems pretty likely the good guys will come out okay, the exact nature of the resolution is not all that obvious till it's reached. I especially liked the main characters, Jack Liffey and his daughter Maeve and Sergeant Ramirez. I was not aware of the nasty history of intolerance attributable to Bakersfield and environs till reading the historical tidbits scattered throughout the text. This is also one of the few books I've picked up that has an alternative ending.

After the first three books I read by John Shannon (long after publication) in anticipation I bought the rest of his novels and each has gotten progressively worse. I couldn't even finish this one.

The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries)

Gripping novel involving those who believe in a literal devil. After I finished reading this book I was "afraid" to even take I-5 through Bakersfield. Good addition to the Jack Liffey saga.

The use of "factoids" were an interesting addition to the Jack Liffey tale -- but do interrupt the flow and apparently annoyed many of the reviewers. If left out, they wouldn't be missed. I read the previous books in this series and enthusiastically recommend them all.

This book is truly awful.

I gave this book two stars because its dialog, when it was not obtuse or disconnected, was not as bad as, say, that of an 11th grade English student. I thank God I got it from a library and only had to pay a small fine because it took so long to read (I would find myself reading three pages and throwing it across the room.)

As for the plot, after reading the book, I am still wondering what it was. There did not seem to be any setup for most of the major events in the story--more like the author sat down to write each day and changed course as whim struck. If something just didn't work, he would leave it in for bulk, and take a new path. In the end, the "hero" finds his daughter, for whom he has been searching, finding, losing, searching, finding, then losing yet again, in a church that is attacked by some unnamed and unexplained group that is somewhere out in a fog (literally, a fog). Then, the police break into the church and save the "hero" from a crazed preacher and the book ends. Poof.

I guess the final blow was that The last short chapter, number 22, was an exact, word-for-word repeat of Chapter 21, except with a different title. If this was some sort of crafty and unprecedented literary artifice, it did not work, unless to underscore the need for a good--no, even a mediocre--editor to get rid of the loose ends, dead plot lines, absence of a unifying theme, and so on.

If I were to capsulize The Devils of Bakersfield into two simple phrases I would have to express it as: a murder mystery with two messages, Bakersfield sucks, and religion = bad. I do not mind people criticizing my home town or religion, which I espouse, as long as they implement it in a intellectual way. In my opinion, the book philosophical content barely attains sophomoric status. Even my class mates who "hate" Bakersfield cared little for this book. For thoughtful and intelligent critique of Bakersfield, see Mean Justice by Edward Humes.
As for the mystery element of the book, the only real mystery is how the author John Shannon convinced the publisher to print this novel. To this day, it still perplexes me. I waited for some unanticipated plot twist, but none came. The whole plot did not rise above anything I could have viewed on TV for free. At one point in the book, the main character, Jack Liffey, and his girlfriend have a sex scene. After reading it, every inch of my body felt as it can just been coded with a greasy film of filth. I felt like I needed a long shower.