Customer Reviews

Shadow Men (Max Freeman Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I can remember reading King's debut, _The Blue Edge of Midnight_ and thinking it had best debut Edgar written all over it (it did win that award). So I was excited when his second book came out. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite as impressed by this second novel, _A Visible Darkness_. In moving the action away from the Everglades, where his character, Max Freeman, an ex-policeman turned private detective lived in virtual isolation, a lot of the magic of the debut was lost. Apparently, King learned from this because book three focuses again on the Everglades and is a real keeper.

_Shadow Men_ involves the search for three men, a father and his two sons, who may have been killed 80 years before during the construction of the first road across the Everglades. All that one of their descendants has to go by are a few letters, which hint at some rather nefarious goings-on at the work site. Apparently, the company which had hired the men wasn't so willing to let them go, once they became disenchanted with the tropical heat and the clouds of mosquitoes.

Someone in the present day isn't too excited either about Max and his lawyer friend, Billy Manchester, digging into this old mystery. Apparently, if the chain of evolution (what company turned into what company, etc.) can be uncovered, a modern corporation can be held liable for something done decades ago.

The action in the novel moves around a lot, but it remains firmly focused on the Everglades themselves, as Max and the old Gladesman Nate Brown, who made an appearance in the second book, search for what may or may not be the final resting place of the three men. There are some great, atmospheric sequences that take place out in the swamps and a memorable scene has Max and Nate crawl into the darkness of a (hopefully) abandoned alligator hole to hide from a couple of men who are tracking them.

Coupled with a subplot that involves Max's policewoman girlfriend and a friend of hers, also a policewoman, who is being stalked by her abusive policeman boyfriend, a subplot that connects directly to Max's past, the book literally flies along. It is very fast-moving and, ultimately, very, very satisfying. Easily one of the best mysteries I've read this year.

Jonathon King is another journalist who writes mystery novels, using his finely tuned descriptive powers to excellent effect, salting his stories with atmospheric settings and moods.

King's series character, Max Freeman, is a former Philadelphia cop who retired to South Florida after he was shot and nearly killed. Now Max spends his days in isolation, living in a shack in the Everglades, only occasionally journeying into civilization to help people in need.

Shadow Men again finds Max taking on the dangerous task of investigating a crime nefarious forces would rather be left ignored. The case takes both Max and the reader on a journey several decades into the region's violent past, a trip that is both fascinating and haunting.

King evokes the locales that fill his stories with such lush and vivid descriptions that the reader can't help but picture them like a movie in their mind. Although the author sometimes limits himself too much with the plots he chooses, he's a talent worth watching.

Reviewed by David Montgomery, Chicago Sun-Times

Having enjoyed the first Jonathon King novel, The Blue-Edge of Midnight, I was then disappointed with the second, Visible Darkness; but his third book is again right on the money. Starting with a grabbing intro and then moving right to the meat of the mystery, this book takes you from the beginning and just doesn't let go.

Max Freeman, our now not so lonely and now Private Investigator, meets with Billy Manchester about an 80 year old suspected disappearance of several family members that is being investigated by the grandson and nephew of the long gone trio. Letters are introduced and then as the tale unfolds, more information is slowly handed to the reader.

Again this book takes place mostly in the Everglades National Park and therefore the writing skills of King transport the reader directly into the story. There are a couple of plotlines going here and with the onion of Freeman's past life again being peeled back, we get a book full of interesting writing that had me totally absorbed.

The mystery is not overly complicated and the story unfolds cleanly. The characters are beginning to take front and center in this series and call for more once the ending is revealed. There are questions about the characters that remain unanswered waiting for the next installment.

Although not a five star book - I reserve that for very special editions, it ranks a solid four star.

This is my second Max Freeman novel. I am very impressed with this author's ability to capture the gritty feeling of a hard-boiled detective novel.
Max is introduced to an 80 year old missing persons case. His client's grandfather and two uncles disappeared in the 1920's while working as laborers building a road through the Everglades. As Max investigates, he finds that this case has a ripple effect into the present day. An excellent read!

This third novel in the series finds Max Freeman still living his self imposed exile deep in the Florida Everglades. Picking up a short time after the events depicted in "A Visible Darkness," Max is still able to live in his shack. His isolation, except for the occasional private investigator job for his friend and attorney, Billy Manchester, has allowed him to slowly come to grips with his actions extensively detailed in the first novel "The Blue Edge Of Midnight." However, the past still bothers him and he sees his pain reflected in the eyes of Billy's latest client.

Mark Mayes is a college student in Atlanta, Georgia and is considering going into the seminary. But, before he can do that, he needs answers about a painful family legacy. Mayes has found a number of letters, yellowed and brittle with age, in his grandmother's attic. The letters seem to indicate that his great-grandfather and two uncles who died in 1923 while working for a private company trying to build the first road across the Everglades may have been murdered. That road became the Tamiami Trail and like his long dead relatives something rarely spoken of in his family. If they were murdered, possibly on behalf of the company that was the law to itself in the merciless swamp, Mayes wants to take legal action against the company assuming it or some form of it still exists.

The great building projects have always taken many lives. The Tamiami Trail is no different in that it too is built upon the bones of the dead. But, as Max reads the copies of the letters again in lantern light in his shack, he too is struck by the power of the letters and the message of fear and desperation they convey. Something sinister was at work then and is still at work today resulting on an attempt on Max's life and other efforts to warn him off even before he starts work. It soon becomes clear that there are some that don't care to have the past uncovered and will stop at nothing to keep it that way.

While little is added to the development of the Max Freeman character, the author manages to skillfully build on the characters of others by way of two engaging secondary storylines involving characters familiar to readers of this series. Written with a prose style that reminds the reader of James Lee Burke where a few words create a powerful mental image, Jonathon King consistently brings the beauty of the Everglades alive as well as the despair and evil that lurks in the hearts of some. This author is one of the very few that can pull the reader in so deeply into his world while he delivers a complex and twisting tale of murder and deceit. His books are escapist literature and instead are far from it as they leave mental images not soon forgotten.

Jonathon King thanks his friend Michael Connelly in the acknowledgments for SHADOW MEN, and it's as if he has somehow channeled Connelly, Dennis Lehane, and John D. MacDonald. All of King's three books are very good, but this one is the best -- weaving a 70-year-old mystery with the tangled past and present of protagonist Max Freeman, a former Philadelphia cop now living in a shack in the Florida Everglades. It's very well plotted, and the secondary characters are nicely drawn. King's descriptions of Florida are so evocative you can hear the waves on the beach and breathe the humid air of the Glades. (Maybe he channels James Lee Burke, too. Don't miss the quick reference to a cap from "Robicheaux's Dock and Bait Shop.") Jonathon King deserves to be much better known than he is. You saw it here first!

Edgar Award winning author Jonathon King presents his third novel in the Max Freeman series. I have really enjoyed all three books and specially like the way in which the author allows us glimpses of Max's past in each of the novels, letting us build an ever-growing detailed depiction of the main character. In the previous books, we found out about the episode that made Max leave the Philly police department and "retire" to the Everglades; now King takes us deeper into the relationship between Max and his father.

Billy, Max's attorney and best friend, has a client that found a bunch of letters from one of his ancestors who worked along with his two sons in the construction of the Tamiami Trail. The letters describe the hardships they had to go through, as well as a series of "accidents" suffered by some of the workers who decided they had enough and tried to leave the project and return to civilization. At one point the letters stopped and nobody ever heard from the three men again. Billy requests Max's help in investigating what happened, and this make some people very nervous.

At the same time, the DA is trying to evict Max from his shack in the Everglades and someone is going through the trouble of threatening Max and attacking his dwelling. Sherry Richards, the police officer Max "discovered" and fell for in the previous novel is still around and the relationship is still on track. However, a fellow female officer of Richard's is the victim of abuse by her lover, who is also a cop, and Max and Richards end up involved in the issue. These events are the ones that get Max to recall the events from the past that relate to his father.

Jonathon King is moving forward through this series with a sure step and without losing intensity. In my particular case, I enjoy the fact that the novel is set up in the Miami / Ft. Lauderdale area, since I lived there for a couple of years and can "see" the places the author describes very clearly. Also, I have driven through the Tamiami Trail several times, and it is interesting to know at least part of the history on its construction, even though some of the facts presented by King are fiction.

Jonathon King is quickly establishing himself as a major figure in the mystery genre. His Max Freeman series is quietly but steadily showing signs of picking up where John D. McDonald's Travis McGee stories left off, chronicling the social and economic mores of south Florida. Freeman, however, is a more enigmatic figure than McGee ever was. The titles of King's novels --- THE BLUE EDGE OF MIDNIGHT, A VISIBLE DARKNESS and now SHADOW MEN --- herald this, promising more darkness than light from the pages within. Freeman becomes more interesting as more is learned about him and his background with each successive novel. Yet each revelation gives rise to more questions.

The second half of SHADOW MEN is better than the first, if only because it seems to take King a bit long to set everything up for what is to come. That isn't to say that the first 130 pages or so of SHADOW MEN is not interesting. There's an 80-year-old mystery here, involving a father and two sons who never made it home after being hired as laborers on a project to build the first road through the Florida Everglades in the 1920s. The reader learns almost immediately what happened to them. The thrust of SHADOW MEN answers the questions of whether --- and, if so, how --- their ultimate fate will be discovered.

The catalyst for the investigation of the deaths is the retention of Billy Maxwell, Freeman's friend and attorney extraordinaire, by Mark Mayes, a college student seeking some closure concerning the fate of the grandfather and uncles he never knew. The only clues that Mayes has in his possession are some letters from his grandfather that implicate Noren, the highway construction company, and an enigmatic foreman named Jefferson.

Maxwell hires Freeman, now a newly minted private investigator, to try to link the ancient evidentiary pieces together. The interplay between Freeman and Maxwell is first rate as King plays off the contrasts between Freeman, the semi-recluse, and Maxwell, the successful attorney, quite nicely. The differences between the men, who would seem to have nothing in common except each other, is actually the glue that binds their friendship. They are both so quirky in their quiet ways that it is doubtful they could get along with anyone who shared their respective personality traits.

King uses the plot of SHADOW MEN as a vehicle for transporting his readers through the swamps of south Florida, off of the beaten track, frequented by the tour airboats and into a region that is loathe, by its very nature, to give up its secrets. Freeman's tenuous romantic relationship with Detective Sherry Richards of the Broward County Sheriff's Office also provides an interesting subplot. The two are so covered with rough edges that someone is going to get cut eventually. The conclusion of SHADOW MEN is inconclusive as to whether someone actually has been. The main story, however, is a fine and subtle morality tale that demonstrates how even casual acts of evil take root and salt the gene pool for generations.

King has really begun to hit his stride here, particularly with his descriptive passages of the dark flora and fauna that inhabit the Everglades region. His prose is evocative of the best of James Lee Burke's work, but without the political baggage that Burke occasionally forces his readers to carry. King also thoughtfully backtracks through the series for first-time readers while continuing to flesh out Freeman's background as a Philadelphia police officer. He has given Freeman plenty of room to grow here. Given the quirky and engaging supporting characters who populate the Freeman novels, and King's well-developed and ever-improving writing, this series should continue to grow in popularity.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

It's the characters, dialogue and sense of place that draws me in and keep me there page after page. Max and Billy are great characters with a strong, involving history. The secondary characters are interesting, rich and dimensional. The contrast between the city and the Everglades, as well as the time Freeman's spends on the water between the two, adds an atmosphere and richness to the story. The plot is a bit weak--I never did quite understand the motive for the killings in the 20's, but the sense of melancholy and nature versus nurture was compelling. I'd certainly recommend giving King a try.

I enjoyed this continuation of an excellent series and felt I was rejoining a old friend, Max Freeman. The author continues his excellent character developement and throws in a rather dark, scary and damp story with it. I continue to enjoy the excellent flashbacks. I do agree with another reviewer, in that you should probably start the series from the beginning and not start with this particular book. While it is good, and certainly stands alone, it can never-the-less be more appreciated if you start at the beginning. Overall, I recommend this and Mr. King's other work highly.