Customer Reviews

Palos Verdes Blue: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is definitely the best Jack Liffey yet.

Shannon displays his unique ability to capture in words how it looks and feels to be in Los Angeles, this time particularly in a rain storm.

And, as always, Shannon uses Liffey and the other characters to shed light on the chasms between classes, ethnicities and communities.

But this is neither a meteorological nor a sociological tome. It's a page-turning detective story well told and filled with humor, snappy repartee and musings, and spinning together all the narrative threads into a cinematic finish.

As much as I wanted to speed up and see how the book came out, I forced myself to slow down to make it last.

I woke up early this morning to finish reading this book. I had about twenty pages left that just wouldn't wait. So I want to write this review while my comments are fresh on my mind...

John Shannon is one of Southern California's local writers. Although our paths have crossed a number of times in the past at places like The Festival of Books and BOOK'em Mysteries, this is the first time I've read one of his novels. I really enjoyed it! He manages to capture the feel of what it's like to live in the southland. You can tell that he really knows the Palos Verdes and San Pedro areas especially well.

The title is a bit misleading, but you'll have to discover that for yourself. There are a number of seemingly minor characters that are major players as the plot unfolds. And several side stories that deal with contemporary issues: emerging sexuality and illegal immigration to name a few. There are some editing errors that created momentary speed bumps while I was reading, but they in no way diminish the author's work.

There are ten previous Jack Liffey novels that I hope to get to. If you like the regional mystery genre, you will really enjoy "Palos Verdes Blue." And Mr. Shannon, the next time I see you I will stop and be friendly.

Palos Verdes Blue is an LA crime novel written in clean, crisp prose by the underappreciated John Shannon. If you're new to this writer, think Raymond Chandler meets TC Boyle: noir crime fiction with a heart and meaningful content -- and touches of LA whimsy for leavening. Shannon cares about his characters and you do too. In this novel, a young girl called "Blue" because of her efforts to save the Palos Verdes Blue butterfly has disappeared and her mother hires detective Jack Liffey to find her.

In all Shannon's crime fiction, his detective, Jack Liffey, specializes in finding lost youngsters. Along the way, he interacts with other troubled souls that populate the LA/Southern California landscape --including his own well-meaning daughter Maeve. When you have that feeling of loss in the pit of your stomach after finishing this book as I did, you can go back and read Shannon's previous novels featuring Jack Liffey!

Once again Jack does it. Great book and a super read. Enjoyed it a lot really recommend that anyone who enjoys good books and great stories picks it up and reads it.
If you enjoyed it go back and read all the others they are some great stories and you should enjoy them all I did.
jim mc guire

LA is as diverse a world as you are likely to find anywhere on the planet, and John Shannon reveals the cultural nooks and crannies that make up much of LA with stories that fascinate. In Palos Verde Blue, we explore these subcultures along with Jack Liffey, a finder of missing children, as he searches for Blue, a missing teen-age girl. Jack's curiosity is our own, and we are surprised and entertained by the cultural conflicts that he discovers. If you are interested in understanding LA, this book is a gold mine. If you just like to read a good mystery, you will be satisfied.

Discovering the Jack Liffey series is so satisfying as John Shannon has created a truly original cast of characters who inhabit an environment which he describes with great skill. Jack is one of the very few adults who "gets" kids. He understands their posturing, their angst, their hopes and without ever patronizing, advising or scolding. Jack, himself,is a complicated and intriguing guy who does his work in a matter of fact way which belies his intelligence and instincts. His daughter, Maeve, and live in girlfriend, Gloria, are also well drawn characters who you care about and root for. Palos Verde Blue is just the most recent in a wonderful series. If you want to do it right, start at the beginning of the series and read about Jack and his life in LA.
You will be pulled into a world to which you have not given much thought....that of missing teens and their families, the police, the neighborhoods of Los Angeles and most of all--- to Jack Liffey, a tremendously fascinating character.

Jack Liffey continues to do the two things he does best: search for a lost young person and uncover the character of a particular locality in Southern California. In this case, he pits the well-to-do of Palos Verdes with the latino workers that labor for them. Shannon does his research like a good sociologist, but, more importantly for the reader, makes the setting and the people work to make a compelling novel. It is always a pleasure to get another Jack Liffey novel and this is no different.

Jack Liffey is a model for what men should be. He cares about people without regard to any qualification. Shannon's mysteries are as good as any ones and better than most.

No one toiling in the crime genre -- and damn few outside it -- write at the consistent level of excellence John Shannon has exhibited since the very first in the Jack Liffey series, The Concrete River. He's not just a great stylist, his stories have emotional and sociological heft, his dialogue is supple and funny, his pacing is swift without sacrificing drama, his characters stay with you long after you reach the last page. He's simply one of the finest writers on the scene today, a constant joy to read, and he's once again shown us LA as nobody else can. These books--and Palo Verdes Blue is merely the last in a line of greats--will come to be seen as one of the most astute and insightful collections ever to explore the racial, social and moral complexity of America's Babylon. And they're damn good fun. Buy them all, read them all.

For John Shannon, Los Angeles is the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. In each of his novels, his detective, Jack Liffey, goes across the borderline into immigrant worlds where he is a foreign presence and one not always well tolerated despite his best efforts. But he is our Virgil through an increasingly unfamiliar inferno, unfamiliar even for those of us who live here in the heart of it. Especially for us. We need a guide and no one else has done the research. You can follow Liffey with a confidence born of real knowledge. When you're done, you will have a smidgen of understanding of lives you had only seen in passing before; you will have lived a short time in a world of difference.

Make no mistake, Shannon has the nuts and bolts of the genre down. He keeps you guessing; he ratchets up the tension chapter by chapter; his endings pay off. But his gift, his great gift, is a humanity that one suspects he shares with his avatar, Liffey, a tough-minded solitary trying to maintain a relationship with his cop girlfriend and raise his daughter whose bleeding romantic heart makes Liffey's seem almost hard by comparison, almost but not quite. He's scarred over pretty good, but most of the nerves have knitted and he still has some feeling.

Won't make a bit of difference where you start; Palos Verdes Blue is as good as the best.

No disrespect to a great mystery writer, but if you think Michael Connelly owns L.A., do yourself a favor: read a Jack Liffey novel and discover whole worlds Harry Bosch just drives through.