Customer Reviews

Hell's Kitchen (Location Scout Mysteries)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Hell's Kitchen" is Jeffery Deaver's last novel in the John Pellam series. "Shallow Graves" and "Bloody River Blues" were the first two in the series. "Hell's Kitchen" is not a re-published novel like the other two, it is brand new novel, published in 2001! It was my second favorite novel out of the three. John Pellam is in Hell's Kitchen, New York, making a documentary about the people there. He meets many interesting people including Ettie Washington. Ettie agrees to meet with John again for another interview, but when John gets to her apartment building, a fire erupts out of the basement. John, Ettie, and the other tenants barely escape in time. The police and fire marshal believe that Ettie hired someone to burn down the apartment building because of Ettie's new insurance policy. Ettie goes to jail. The arsonist is on the run burning subway trains, hotels, hospitals, stores, lawyer firms, killing many people in his way. John Pellam must capture this crazy arsonist and prove Ettie's innocense with the help of gang members, punks, and powerful construction builders, before Hell's Kitchen burns into hell. If you read the first two Pellam novels, then you cannot miss this one!

The amiable John Pellam is back in his third outing, this time filming an oral history of the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City. His centerpiece is Ettie Washington, a 72 year-old black lady who narrates colorful stories from her checkered past all spent in a five-block area of Hell's Kitchen. A suspicious fire erupts in her tenement injuring her and burns the building to the ground. Arson is suspected and Ettie is the suspect in chief.

Deaver sets the mood of the neighborhood and skillfully sketches some interesting characters. The history is presented in a lively manner (have fun while you learn). The dark humor breaks out in a sneaky manner when you least expect it. That's the good news.

The bad news is the story lacks focus and consequently does not have tension. There are too many aimless threads. Though Pellam's goal is to find the arsonist and get Effie out of jail, many of the paths he takes have nothing to do with her. I felt as if I were traveling from NYC to Washington DC via Denver and Omaha. There are corporate high jinks, yards of bureaucratic red tape, and worst of all a prevailing pessimism that it really isn't important whether Effie is innocent or not.

The last 30 pages are pure Deaver. He twists and turns, the good guys have feet of clay, the villains are actually heroic. You think the action is over, but wait! That was only a prelude to even greater action. No one can set a finale like Deaver. The problem was getting there.

The novel itself was fine. Compared to the earlier John Pellam stories, this was more like the Jeffery Deaver books that got me hooked in the first place.

What was truly disappointing was the Kindle version. It appears that somebody just took a printed copy of the novel, scanned it with OCR (optical character recognition) and hoped for the best. There are the obvious misinterpretations of scanned text ("die" when it should be "the") along with poor spacing all around. Section breaks are left out, so you're all of a sudden in a different time or place without a break in the flow to clue you in. Even new paragraphs are indented just the tiniest sliver, so it's often hard to follow a simple conversation without the visual cues. A quick read by a 10-year-old with a high-lighter could have corrected most of the flaws, but clearly the publisher was just looking to fill up digital pages at seven bucks a pop.

P. S. "Bloody River Blues" is just as poorly formatted.

For the last eight years, John Pellam has worked as a Production Scout for film companies. However, in the last three months John has rented an apartment in the east Village and is filming his first documentary centering on Ettie Washington. John visits Ettie in Hell's Kitchen, but when he arrives he finds her trapped by a fire. She manages to escape through a window and gets to he hospital, but soon the police and fire marshal arrest her believing she is a serial arsonist trying to defraud the insurance company.

The police know the arsonist leaves a trademark signature and enjoys his work. They want Ettie to confess, but she insists she is innocent and never took out an insurance policy. John, who has become quite fond of Ettie, begins investigating the crime, a decision which places him in danger.

Jeffrey Deaver, writing as William Jeffries, shows a different side of his abundant talent as he concentrates more on the characters than the action thrillers. He captures the essence of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen inside a fast-paced suspense novel. The relationship between John and Ettie is interesting, but the ending blind sides the reader who should have known that a Deaver by any other name is still a Deaver, which means a great reading experience.

Harriet Klausner

First let me say that I am a huge Jeffrey Deaver fan. He is definitely one of the top three in my eyes but this book left a lot to be desired. It was a struggle to get through it and it was way too predictable compared to his other novels that have trademark twists and turns. I did appreciate the historical nature of the novel and learning more about Hell's Kitchen. However, I was overall disappointed with the novel's content.

Deaver, or in this case Jefferies, is a consistently good writer. His mysteries always give the benefit of the doubt to the reader assuming that we will be intelligent enough to follow along with the story, even if it takes bends that we might not foresee. This time he delves into the interesting history of Hell's Kitchen in New York city from the viewpoint of a black woman who has lived there all her life. As someone who has done geneaology and appreciates the need for visual and verbal histories, this was an extremely interesting book. The background and the history of the area could definitely make a book of its own, but of course the mystery is what draws the major attention here. Once again, I tend to shudder lest some wacko reads the book and takes ideas from the author's well-done plot, but I am well aware that much of this information can be found by anyone who really wants to find it. We just have to hope no one does exactly that.

The information on arsonists and fire fighting was interesting. Since Deaver has written more in-depth mysteries, this one was not as deeply involved as it could have been. It was an extremely enjoyable read though. Karen Sadler Science Education University of Pittsburgh

Hell's Kitchen is the third (and so far final) Jeffrey Deaver Location Scout novel. Whilst doing research in Hell's Kitchen, Pellam is caught in the fire that burns down a tenement building. The prime suspect is Ettie Wilkes Washington, the old black woman he has been interviewing for his oral history of Hell's Kitchen. Convinced of her innocence, Pellam starts his own investigation. He mixes it with fire marshals, street kids, youth outreach workers, jaded lawyers, Latino and Irish gangs, land developers, high society and a pyromaniac. Who is telling the truth, and what are cleverly fabricated lies? Is anyone, including Pellam, being completely honest? Once again, plenty of twists in the tale, leading to a dramatic conflagration. An excellent Location Scout novel with room for sequels if Deaver decides to revisit this reluctant hero.

The long awaited final story in the John Pellam series take the reader deep into the back streets of New York with an pyromaniac. HELL'S KITCHEN by Jeffery Deaver is an action packed fast read.

John Pellam meets Ettie Washington and asks for an interview of his non-existent budget documentary on HELL'S KITCHEN. As the interview begins to old tenement building erupts into flames. Ettie, John, and the other tenants barely escape with their lives. Ettie is arrested for arson because of her new insurance policy and John must fine the true arsonist to prove her innocence.

Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS.

Good book but Deaver has written better. Lost interest in book, had to sit it down and come back to it later. Still a decent read.

This was a very boring book. The story would have been better if there were less characters