Carl Deuker -- Books, Movies, TV

Malone rats out Torrez who then kills himself.  Malone struggling to hold it all together. Feds on him; his obligations to his team; Claudette. Monty wants to retire and move to the Carolinas.  Levin is brand new.  Malone could end up sending them all to jail.  What's an Irish cop to do?  Enjoyable

Malone in serious trouble with the Feds. They have him on tape accepting money from a lawyer and then passing it on to an asst. D.A. to get a client off.  Now, the guy who hates rats must rat out somebody or go to jail. He's trying to keep his honor by ratting out only lawyers and judges, but the Feds want cops, too.  His girlfriend, C., lapses back into heroin use.  M. threatens to kill her supplier.  Unsure where this is going as I'm only half done. Maybe the "ending" that started the book isn't the ending.  Maybe M. works himself out of trouble.  Liking this okay, but still find the "hard-boiled" tone a bit tough to swallow. Unremitting.

Liking it more, though the cynicism seems forced to me.  Black humor about shooting corpses how pop back to life. Dead cop who took viagra just before a heart attack at a brothel and has an erection when his wife identifies the body.  She's happy to know he went out a tiger.  That sort of thing. Malone gets a new member of the team. Levin. They quickly initiate him. He goes from boy scout to implicated in a series of "dirty cop" escapades in one day. Good passages on what it means to be black in America. The mystery is:  how does Malone end up in jail.

Finding this a bit overwrought.  Adjective upon adjective--hard-boiled, cynical, flashy.  Cop in NYC in Harlem. Fighting the bad guys but not unlike the bad guys.  Corrupt, but with honor.  Book begins with him in jail, so no suspense there.  Book describes how he gets there. 

VERY STRONG ENDING All the mysteries are nicely resolved.  It's a good ghost story, too, but the revelation comes all in a piece and pretty much explains everything.  A village with a secret. Since it's a short book, maybe the strong ending saves the whole thing.  I'll have to think about that. Spoilers:  The mother who was forced to give up her baby returns and lives near the child, as an aunt.  Child loves her; she loves child.  Boy goes out one day; mists come up; coach & child & nanny & driver all drown in marsh. Mother--angry and bitter about being forced to give up the child--dies later of heart failure, but comes back to haunt the village.  Whenever she is seen, a child dies. Our narrator learns that no child has died since his sighting . . . has the cycle ended? NO! In a very nice twist, even though reader could see it coming, it is his own firstborn child who dies.  The child is in a coach in London.  The ghost st...

Great atmosphere. Interesting characters. Slender, slender plot. Eel House is haunted by the woman in black. There also is ghostly death of a young child in a coach that is sucked up by quicksand.  Our hero, alone in Eel House, reads of a child years ago taken from a mother and adopted by relatives--no doubt the drowned child.  And that's it for plot, other than the locals all being reluctant to go near Eel House or discuss it or admit to seeing the Woman in Black.  Too bad the plot is so thin as the rest is very good.

Ghost story, but I'm 50% into it and so far I have all atmosphere and very little plot.  Perhaps there is going to be something about the drowning in quicksand of a child and an adult.  Woman who lives in creepy, but intriguing, old house has died. Lawyer goes out to clean up the estate.  The house can only be reached at certain low tides, so he needs to stay there. Woman in Black at the funeral, but only lawyer sees her. Child going down in quicksand, but lawyer believes (after a while) that this is also a ghost. Townspeople seem to expect him to see ghosts.  No one goes near the old lady's house. No one attends her funeral.  There is a story here  Problem is it's taking a long time to get to the story.