Customer Reviews

Flamethrower (Ruby Murphy Mysteries)

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

 

 

If you love the low keyed style of New York you'll love reading Estep's books about a "hot walker" called Ruby Murphy. To me, her sleuthing is secondary to great descriptions of New York, race tracks and biking all over Coney Island on the shoreline. Can't wait for the next challenge.

I enjoy Ruby, although I think it's time for Ms. Estep to develop her a bit more. Why does she live the life she does, for example. The greater issue for me, however, is the slightness of both book and story. Both lacked depth, not depth as in profundity, which I'm not looking for, but depth as in dimension and development. Nothing is fully enough explored or explained. The character of "Flamethrower" herself does not make sense to me; we needed more background and a more believable development. All in all, to be satisfying this story should have been twice as long.

Ruby is seeing psychiatrist Dr. Judy Ray to try to come to terms with seeing her lover killed before her very eyes. During their appointment, Ruby goes to the bathroom and sees a foot in the fishtank. Judy sees it and identifies it as belonging to her estranged husband Tobias because of the birthmark on the calf of the leg. There is also a note that says "No Police. Just Wait." Judy refuses to call the police and ends her appointment with Ruby.

Later, Judy asks her to find Tobias who might be at a second hideaway in the Rockaways; Ruby agrees to help her. She finds Tobias and learns that he orchestrated the plot but his partner got carried away and cut off his leg as proof that the man was in danger. Ruby leaves and finds that her live in lover wants to leave her because he received some pornographic pictures with her in it and her boss fires her because he believes she stole some money from him. When Tobias offers her $1000 to find Judy who disappeared she accepts because she need the money, not realizing her action will cause a tragedy.

FLAMETHROWER is a gritty and dark urban noir thriller. The protagonist is an interesting individual who copes admirably when her life seems at its bleakest. Readers get an interesting tour of Brooklyn and somewhat Queens, the kind tourists don't see. There is only one villain in this story but that person comes as a surprise to readers who hardly notice the character as Maggie Estep knows how to tell a good story about the lost and lonely people who frequent Ruby's world.

Harriet Klausner

This is my first Ruby book and is definitely my last. I admit, I'm only on page 36 but it's already too much. I mean not bad writing, but...besides the leg in the aquarium, memories of murdered lover dying in her arms and all other "mystery" attributes, there are horses, cleaning the stables, riding bicycles that terrifies the heroine but she keeps riding for some strange reason, book about rats she is reading ("it's so primal"), feeding cats in the darkness because she can't climb the table to change the bulb of her fear of "heights", the weird job at the weird museum, the boyfriend obsession with horses, her "pet horse" she is too terrified to ride (and who really owns horses in NYC area?) and finally her rising at 3:30 in the morning (this is after coming home past 11 at night) on her day off to go to place of HIS work...to see ...more horses! ugh!...well that did it for me!
Horses aside, 3:30 in the morning on your day off?? Does this woman do ANYTHING ordinary? Even her cooking is some kind of weird tofu dish with weird stuff that her boyfriend obviously can't tolerate, but she keeps cooking anyway. I mean I don't mean a little weirdness or anything, but seriously?

And then I come here and read the reviews and find out that there is MORE weird stuff? Thanks but no thanks - no more Ruby for me.

Ruby Murphy is an ex-alcoholic horse-lover, dog-lover and cat-lover, who keeps an "emergency can of tuna" for any hungry strays she might encounter and gets involved in unstable relationships with unstable men (mostly). She suspects something is wrong when a human leg turns up in a fish tank in the waiting room of her psychiatrist, who looks at it (the leg) and says "it's my husband's" and tells her the therapy session is terminated.
A slight plot problem was why Murphy (a "downwardly mobile" intermittent Coney Island side show worker) gets so involved in solving the mystery. At first it's because her psychiatrist asks for her help in finding her (the psychiatrist's) husband, and then because the husband gives her (Murphy) a thousand dollars to find his wife.
Apart from stints in Manhattan and Pennsylvania, it's most set in the outermost outer boroughs of New York City, places I vaguely thought were in Nassau County, and dense with outer borough and horse-racing atmosphere.
It's apparently third in a series. I'm just about to order the other two.