Customer Reviews

Red Cat (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Easily one of the best mysteries I've read in a long time. John March is one of those jaded, cynical detectives in the noir tradition of Sam Spade, but there's an idealistic heart buried under his tough exterior. In "Red Cat," John tries to save his thankless brother David first from blackmail and later from a charge of murder. The murder victim is David's beautiful, talented, dangerously disturbed mistress and Spiegelman does a great job of making the reader care about this woman, whose unsavory life reads like a sleazy tabloid story. There are plenty of suspects to go around and Spiegelman also does a good job of diverting reader suspicion from one to the other. I admit I did have the who figured out before the end, but the clues were subtle and easily missed; and the story was so well-written, I enjoyed reading along and waiting for John's detecting to catch up to my own. The pacing of the story is excellent. In fact, I read the book in one day. Every time I tried to put it down and do something else, I just had to get back to it. All in all, a really well-written and enjoyable mystery.

Growing up brothers John and David March detested one another; as adults their scorn for the other remains unabated. Thus John is more than shocked when his snobbish business executive David turns to him for help. The married David used an Internet site to arrange a tryst. The woman videotaped their performance, which if revealed would cost the older sibling his job and probably his wife; he wants his younger sibling, a private investigator to find out what is going on and how to prevent the personal disaster from occurring. The only additional clue is a red cat tattoo on the hooker.

John learns the female is Wren, who is not blackmailing David per say, but considers herself an artist selling her tapes of married men cheating with her to the highest bidding collector. The scenario takes a deadly spin when someone murders Wren. John assumes that a sex client committed the homicide, but wonders if righteous David could have performed the deed even as he ponders whether blood is thick enough to propel him to protect David especially if he turns out to be the killer.

Besides the family dynamics, RED CAT is a fabulous modern day Noir that brings the Internet fully into the sub-genre. John is terrific as he loathes his pompous "superior" older brother, but also resolves to do his best by him as he is family. Peter Spiegelman provides a great whodunit starring one of the best sleuths to hit the information age (see BLACK MAPS and DEATH'S LITTLE HELPERS).

Harriet Klausner

As Spiegelman's third John March novel opens, the PI is approached by his insufferable brother David for help in extracting himself from a scenario straight out of Fatal Attraction--sexually adventurous, David is being stalked by a woman he met on the Internet who is apparently interested in more than anonymous sexual trysts. Somehow, she's figured out who he is, and is threatening to reveal their illicit affair to David's wife. David, who only knows the woman as "Wren", finds himself in need of someone with his brother's unique skill set. John agrees to help his sibling, and begins digging into the woman's background. Before he can locate her, however, a corpse fitting Wren's description is fished from the Hudson, rendering his brother a suspect in a brutal murder.

Inventive, nimble, and knowing, Spiegelman cements his position as one of today's most gifted mystery writers with the action rich, yet strangely cerebral, Red Cat. John March is intelligent, sensitive and empathetic, a thinking man's gumshoe who brings a fresh perspective to the mystery genre. March is totally consumed by the difficult case, which leads him into some pretty volatile terrain, both professional and personal, teaching him lessons about himself and about his brother, with whom he has little in common. Although she never appears in a speaking role in this novel, Wren is a powerful presence in the book, exerting a strong influence over the people around her, and, eventually over John, as he comes to appreciate her as a person.

Peter Spiegelman is not a prolific writer, at least by today's one-book-per-year standard. In the past six years he has published three books --- BLACK MAPS, DEATH'S LITTLE HELPERS and now RED CAT --- at two-year intervals, just long enough that the readership could almost forget the razor sharpness and clarity of the craftsmanship exhibited in his prior work. There is simply no way, however, that anyone reading RED CAT will ever forget about him. This is a towering work, an instant classic of noir fiction, that establishes Spiegelman's position as the master of the genre for our time.

John March is Spiegelman's damaged Everyman --- an underachiever by the standards of his financially successful family --- who, as Spiegelman has subtly informed his readers over the course of three novels, is probably more intelligent than all of them put together. March is a quietly roiling mass of contradictions, a man who ultimately is unsuccessful at relationships whether it be with family, friends or lovers, but is intrigued by the machinations and interactions of individuals. His vocation as a private investigator in New York City provides him with plenty of grist to mill. Yet even he is surprised when his latest client turns out to be his outwardly superior brother, David, a successful merchant banker who is on the brink of losing everything he holds dear.

David, it seems, has a hobby that consists of conducting a series of affairs with women he meets over the Internet. The affairs are generally passionate, if short-lived, with everyone being very adult and sophisticated about their eventual termination. But then comes Wren, a mysterious woman who has provided David with sexual encounters unlike any he has previously experienced. When David seeks to discontinue the relationship, however, Wren begins calling his office and home, and sends him emails asking to see him and threatening to tell his wife about their trysts. David wants John to find Wren and warn her off, a task made difficult by the fact that David doesn't know where Wren lives or even what her real name is.

With a bit of dogged work, John is able to uncover Wren's identity and, with some more determination, finds her apartment. The apartment seems to be a dead end, even as he discovers that the woman his brother knows as Wren is an actress, a playwright and, most significantly, a pornographer. Everything changes, though, when a body that appears to be Wren's surfaces in the East River. John realizes that the trail of Wren's murderer leads directly back to David's door and that he needs to unravel all of Wren's secrets, even as he must face uncomfortable truths about David and himself.

RED CAT is a dark, brooding work, full of secrets, shame and desperation in even the most unexpected corners. Spiegelman's New York is full of shadows and sorrows, where survival at the end of the day passes for a grim happiness. His clarity of language and vision is such, however, that one cannot resist looking again and again at what is being lost and, in rare cases, being found. This is a book that simply cannot and should not be missed.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

John March earns his living as a PI, but he is torn about taking the latest case offered to him. John's brother David has gotten himself into quite a mess. Even though David is married, he has succumbed to the tantalizing temptations of Internet sites and casual sexual hook-ups. David wanted the excitement of a torrid affair, but has become more than a little nervous when his online honey won't go away quietly and is calling and threatening him. David wants John to track this "fatal attraction" woman down before things spiral out of control. In the anonymous Internet world with fake names John has very little to search by other than the woman's red cat tattoo on her thigh.
John does not get too far into his search before a "Jane Doe" body with this unique tattoo is pulled from the river. David is considered a serious suspect and John tries to clear his brother despite his own doubts of David's innocence.
RED CAT is the third in a series with John March as protagonist. Although I have not read the earlier novels, I had no trouble following this compelling story. Mr. Spiegelman's debut novel, BLACK MAPS, won the Shamus Award for best first PI novel. It is easy to see why. The author has artfully crafted a noir PI novel that goes beyond the usual gumshoe genre and delves into the dark side of the human heart and family relationships.
RED CAT is a taut tale that also looks as such issues as the fine line between what is art and what is meaningless sleaze and pornography. The characters appear very real since it seems every week there are new sex scandals involving prominent people who should have known better. The author's pacing and dialog are perfect. The reader is pulled into the book from the first page and taken on a wild ride to the very last page.
If you enjoy a walk on the wild side, this is the book for you. I will be catching up on the author's previous novels very soon and looking forward to new ones in the near future.

Red Cat shows Mr. Spiegelman to be learning from experience. In his debut novel Black Maps, for example--you could see potential, but you could also see where some editing would have been helpful. The plot is juicier in Red Cat; and for sure, the cover grabs your attention.

Private investigator John March runs around NYC trying to find out the identity of a femme fatal who keeps pestering his married brother when their affair is long over. There are some neat twists and turns as March gets closer to the truth, and we meet a few of the characters to whom we were introduced in Black Maps. Although the plot and pacing are good, the final showdown is pretty unimpressive. In the end, it's John March who brings the book its few criticisms.

Previous reviewers have hit on these obvious points. His brothers and sister are verbally abusive to him, and March just lies back and takes it in the chin. Right off the bat in Red Cat, his very foolish brother starts sneering at him when he himself is quite worthy of contempt and in heaps of trouble himself. Our hero is positively Vulcan toward Clare, a smart, poised woman who seems to enjoy the roommate-with-benefits situation that she and March are sharing.

He doesn't care if she comes or goes; he's self absorbed; and seems so spartan as to be weird. Mr. Spiegelman would do well to get March some feelings. There can't be a new love interest in every book a la Fleming, and March needs to have other interests apart from running fifty miles a day and eating tuna fish sandwiches.

Don't be put off by these minor nuances. Mr. Spiegelman has been paying attention and making this PI series better and better. The setting of millions-of-dollars NYC apartments with window views showing "a wedge of the Guggenheim" is pretty fascinating, and we readers shouldn't get tired of many more novels set in our quintessential city.

nice hard hitting crime noir...let's hope John March mysteries stay around a while

What makes Red Cat so enjoyable to read is that Spiegelman's plotting is just so well done. As you follow March, a private eye, and as he slowly uncovers depths of a mystery, you really get dragged into the story. Primarily, in my opinion, this is because the evidence uncovered by March comes forth through such great effort. I really enjoyed this aspect because in most books the clues fall into protagonists laps. Here however small bits of evidence are brutally carved from New Yorks city streets. This is a meaty gritty novel.

Some things I found annoying were small, but I wanted to air them out anyways. Perhaps most grating in my mind was Spiegelman's need to start a chapter at one point in time, write a few sentences, and then jump back and fill in how March got to there. He does this over and over again. In my mind this is just a cute narrative trick and it took away something from the linear progression of a novel. Secondly, Spiegelman is not yet a master of the pen. His writing is sort of empty. I felt like I was reading one of those very slow English detective novels and thus the suspense was often non-existent. I guess I have a few more items, but they are like the above and thus are rather slight.

I would recommend this book to fellow mystery lovers. It is a joy to have someone searching out and tracking down actual clues for a change. Dont see that too often any more. I totally am looking forwards to reading more of this authors work.

PI John March gets an unexpected phone call from his brother, he sounds quite desperate asking for a secret meet, very unusual to hear from any of his siblings John agrees. David March lays it down straight or as straight as he believes he can be, prim in his every day life and very judgmental of others in public he suddenly drops the bomb shell, his been having sexual encounters with women arranged anonymously over the internet, but this time the contact has turned nasty she's got hold of all David's private numbers and has been leaving messages at work and on his mobile phone, of course these messages could now cost him his marriage if this woman tries to reach his home.

David informs his brother to track down this woman and put a stop to his harassment. All John has to go on is the internet codename Wren, he starts to dig around very quietly but stumbles straight into one of the underbelly's darkest world's. How was he going to be able to find and reason with this women but that problem just got solved, Wren turns up dead in New York's East River. John's race now is to find the killer before his brother and him are traced and arrested for a murder they didn't commit.

Thoroughly enjoyed this, it's dark, smart, modern and the writing keeps the pages turning. I loved the way the author Peter Spiegelman has used this novel to explore the relationship between siblings, husband and wives, parents and children, using emotional baggage that one family the dysfunctional March family carry around and it's shown in past and present with misplaced loyalties and simmering resentment.

The dialogue is straight talking, something I happen to love. Characters are nicely drawn out revealing themselves slowly and just when you thought you knew them another complex moment could throw your ideas of that person in a different direction, even makes you asks yourself the question, how well do you think you know you're nearest and dearest?

The Wren character is a complicated twisted piece of work, fantastic in this piece of writing. This book also looks at the Art world and that blurry line between certain kinds of transgressive art and pornography giving you strong psychology that offers up different theories and thought provoking ideas that could deliver more than one outcome.

Fast, sharp, shocking, great reading and Highly Recommended.

Andrea Bowhill

Red Cat follows Black Maps and Death's Little Helpers. The protagonists family plays a far more central role in this novel and so Spiegelman is able to flesh out the background of his character considerably more than we saw in the first two novels.

Spiegelman does a good job with portraying the3 impact of salacious sex scandal break out in the affluent March family. He also does a good job with the pacing of the plot, something he hasn't always achieved in either of the first two books.

This is an engaging series which continues to get better with each book. My only gripe is that Spiegelman seems stuck in a rut with how he portrays the lov3e interest of the protagonist. He seems to have written all the prior women in March's life out of the picture by the end of the book. March is way too lonely a charcter to let lie fallow. I hope Spiegelman resolves this in the fourth book.