What I've been reading (continued)

I love a hard-boiled detective story, and while The Corruptible by Mark Mynheir doesn’t rise to the top of the genre, it still provided a satisfying summer read.

Ray Quinn, private eye, used to be an Orlando homicide detective, but was forced to retire when he was shot, permanently damaging one of his legs. But he’s still got lots of friends on the force, and unlike most fictional private eyes, he prefers to work with the police instead of against them. When he is hired to find a computer hard drive that contains valuable information belonging to a rich client, it seems like he’s hit the jackpot. That is, until the guy who apparently stole the goods, an ex-cop and former friend of Ray’s, ends up murdered.

Ray, his apprentice Crevis (like a split in a rock), and former client and friend Pam, rapidly find their own lives in danger as they try to unravel a complicated plot of revenge, greed, and murder. In the first half of the book, tends to overdo the descriptive language typical of this genre: “He had a brown flattop haircut as tight as a boot brush and a chin cleft deep enough to hide a TV remote.”

And, although this is marketed as Christian fiction, the religious elements were integrated into the story fairly smoothly. I say “fairly” because there were a few times when the realities of writing about hardened underworld characters clashed with the author’s choice of language. For instance, at one point the head of a criminal motorcycle gang says, “That snitch put me in federal custody and stole twelve years of my life. He got almost everyone in this room some time in prison. I don’t think ‘miffed’ quite covers what I feel for that traitorous, no-good, filthy, lowlife narc cop piece of sewage.” Now, I applaud Mynheir’s decision not to use profanity in this book. But it would have been better to skip it than substitute this silly and unbelievable tirade.

Like all good detective stories, you probably won’t figure out “who done it” until moments before (or after) Ray Quinn solves the case. Then you’ll slap your forehead, because all the clues were there – you just missed them. The story was just good enough to keep me reading, but not so engaging that couldn’t put it down. And it did leave me wanting to find out happens next. All in all, a good read.

The publisher, Thomas Nelson, provided me with a complimentary copy of this book.