Shadow Men by
Jonathon King
pbk out October 04
(Orion)
at £9.99
A good straight-forward private eye thriller from Oscar-winning
author Jonathon King. His ex-Philadelphia cop Max Freeman
returns to pursue an eighty-year old mystery in the Florida
Everglades.
As well as being a crime novel, the book has an interesting
geographical and historical basis, as it seems that in the 1920's the
first road was built across the southern tip of the Florida peninsula
to join the Miami area with the west coast. This was through almost
impossible terrain, alligator-infested swamps with little solid
ground anywhere. A causeway was laboriously built, using a huge
dredge that slowly heaped up a ramp across the mosquito-ridden
wetlands. The contractors hired casual labour, but in this story, a
number vanish without trace and a descendent of a father and two
sons finds old evidence that suggests they were murdered by a
psychopathic rifleman who was employed by the contractors to
shoot alligators and run-away workmen.
Max is hired by his lawyer friend to investigate, but he is threatened
and impeded at every turn by someone who does not wish the truth
to emerge.
The story is a satisfying 'beginning, middle and end' type yarn,
the only unusual feature being a series of flashback to anecdotes
about Max's previous life in the Philadelphia Police Department,
which, though interesting, are irrelevant to the main story.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Shadow Men by
Jonathon King
