Customer Reviews

Losers Live Longer

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

 

 

Having finished reading several of Donald Westlake's comic crime series featuring John Dortmunder, the bad luck loser among thieves, was I ready for a private eye loser? Well, ready or not, Atwood's Payton Sherwood was a winner! Sherwood is an underemployed private eye who in the investigation of the death of an elderly famous P.I. endures beatings, verbal abuse, attempts on his life, and unceasing doubts about his abilities. But Sherwood, like Dortmunder, is persistent. At one near-fatal point in his life, Sherwood says "I hung on. It's what I do." Sorta like you and me (well, me, anyway!) rather than the James Bond super-hero. Atwood's writing is crisp and appropriate for the characters and locales he portrays, including his carefully chosen incomplete sentences. His frequent similies are creative, such as: "I was trying to gather my wits, but it was like reconstructing a blown-apart dandelion." That is writing well worth reading. And the "loser" Sherwood -- what about him... well, he comes out on top at the end. My hope is that Russell Atwood is busy writing his third Sherwood novel now!

This might be a crime novel, but protagonist Payton Sherwood is the most likable guy you're apt to meet, the kind you wish was your friend. Russell Atwood's dialogue is clever and entertaining, and his rich cast of colorfully drawn characters holds your interest. I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good mystery, and especially to anyone who's ever spent an afternoon wandering around the East Village, a place Atwood knows like the back of his hand and brilliantly recreates.

The follow-up to author Russell Atwood's debut novel (and cult favorite), East of A, was ten years in the writing. Originally titled Between C and D (making for a sort of A-B-C-D motif across the titles, which is cute), Losers Live Longer is also a sequel, featuring Atwood's private investigator Payton Sherwood and a beautifully unconventional horizontal cover painting by Robert McGinnis.

At 9:30 in the morning, the Thursday after Labor Day, private detective Payton Sherwood's buzzer sounds -- a highly unexpected intrusion during a time of few clients. But it is a client ... sort of. Private eye extraordinaire George Rowell (called "Owl" by his friends and colleagues) wants Sherwood to follow a follower, a simple soft cover job.

But before Sherwood can get down to the street to discuss the job with the great detective, Rowell is killed, and Sherwood sets out to find the killer. However, nothing is ever so simple in New York City, and Sherwood gets deep into the dark side of the city and finds out more about human depravity than he ever wanted to know.

Losers Live Longer has an odd sort of protagonist: Sherwood seems to only be playing detective, more interested in spouting pop-culture references than in doing any real legwork. (Though any book that obliquely references The Electric Company and Sesame Street and directly name-checks Murder, My Sweet can't be all bad.)

I have a tendency to think this is a result of the author's putting too much of himself into the character (Atwood, Sherwood: it's not a big leap, and it reminds me of the Lawrence Block stories with characters called "Lenny Blake" and the like). This is generally a bad idea unless your plot is particularly strong, and the plot of Losers Live Longer is just OK. It also takes a while to get going. (As usual in this genre, things don't get really interesting until the ladies show up.)

Flaws in either plot or characterization can generally be overlooked, though, if they complement each other. Neither is strong enough to carry Losers Live Longer by itself, but they're just good enough together to make for a decent read, if not a particularly memorable one.

Payton Sherwood is a private eye with a shabby office in New York's East Village. He was fired five years ago for dereliction of duty by a large agency. So far this year, he has had four cases which barely covered the rent, and last week he borrowed $1,000 from his parents to cover recent expenses. When he is offered a gig for $100 by a retired legendary detective, he gushes.

The "client" asks him to go to a nearby restaurant and see if he can pick up the trail of a tail. The "client" is the victim of a hit-and-run "accident" a few minutes later. Payton feels obligated to follow up on the request, although he has no information about the tail or the target. What follows is a comedy of errors until the denouement.

The author's descriptions of lower Manhattan are poignant, and Payton's reminiscences about the 2nd Avenue Deli or Katz's Delicatessen, or the changing nature of the neighborhoods in lower Manhattan, are impressive. Payton is not a particularly appealing character, and the use of vulgar language, presumably to establish his hard-boiled character, is less than charming. But the plot moves forward in many unexpected ways, and it makes for interesting reading.

Payton Sherwood, narrator and protagonist of Losers Live Longer, is a modern day PI who in the course of an action packed 24 hours solves a number of diverse though ultimately interrelated crimes. The setting for this recent entry in the Hard Case Crime series is lower Manhattan and the crimes Payton finds himself confronted with are "ripped from the headlines".
Author Russell Atwood skillfully succeeds in capturing reader interest with memorable characters, plenty of clever dialogue and a complex yet fast paced plot. Though written with obvious affection for the hardboiled classics of yesteryear, Losers Live Longer is very much a crime novel for the 21st century.
A welcome addition to the Hard Case Crime series.

A year or so, I watched a set of B mysteries featuring detective Michael Shayne. One of the special features was a mini-documentary on Robert McGinnis, one of the great pulp mystery artists. In this era where book covers are typically dull, McGinnis and his ilk stand out even more. Happily, Hard Case Crime realizes this, bringing back this classic style. McGinnis himself does the cover for Russell Atwood's Losers Live Longer.

Losers Live Longer. It's the title of the novel, but is it really the case? Private eye George Rowell is a real winner, a legend in the profession who's reached old age. While many fictional detectives seem to perish right after retirement, he's made it to his golden years. Unfortunately, he came out of his retirement and soon is dead, the victim of a seeming accident.

Narrator Payton Sherwood may or may not live a long life, but he is clearly a loser, at least career-wise. A down-and-out private eye who can number his recent cases on one hand, Sherwood gets an opportunity from Rowell involving flushing out a possible tail, but Rowell's death leaves Sherwood in the dark. Still, he decides to do what he can to assist in the case.

This is a nice, back-to-the-basics private eye story with a sardonic main character in the Philip Marlowe mold. By the end of the book, he will deal with assorted femme fatales and vicious crooks, often getting blows to the head for his troubles. If you're a fan of the classic hard-boiled mystery, this is one to pick up and enjoy.

Peyton Sherwood slips out of the investigative loop from time to time yet manages to land on his feet. Impefect yet likeable.
I hope Russell Atwood is able to put one of these on the shelves every year.

"I'm really the Green Lantern'....

How many detective novels can use the line "I'm really the Green Lantern" and get away with it?

Not too many if they are not comic book based characters or plots. In "Losers Live Longer", Rusell Atwood creates a novel that is amazing in its' attraction and style. WIth the death of private eye George Rowell (Orwell?), Payton Sherwood is on the trail of a serial killer with as many as 8 kills to his name by the end of the book.

His style is a mix between Max Allan Collins, Erle Stanley Gardner and Frederick Faust, yet its' stylistic leanings capture a genre unlike many other attempts to do so. This is not just noir. This is not just mystery. It is more, yet less of a mix than a leaner, cleaner, more realistic prose style. I could not put the book down. Speed read, or slow read, it was the same. Magnificent.

Look for "Losers Live Longer" at your local book dealer. Buy it for the story, or for the McGinnis cover which just happens to resemble Cher. Either way you win.

"Losers Live Longer" is an unconvincing crime noir novel from the Hard Case Crime series that really never grabs the reader. The plot is a muddled mix that never goes anywhere and by the end, you don't especially care how it turns out, you are just glad it is over. The fact that all of this book takes place in one day in a small area around the main characters office is also a stretch. The Hard Case Crime series has many other excellent offerings, so look elsewhere for your private eye fix.