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BOOK REVIEW: A Killing Night Jonathon King, Dutton, New York, 2005
Vince Lombardi used to preach that the key to winning was not your strategy or your game plan, but execution. If your tackles tackled, your blockers blocked and your runners ran, most often you would win. The opposition knew Lombardi’s game plan: off-tackle, off-tackle, pass to the tight end, with just enough long passes to keep the defense off balance, but when his Packers were executing properly, it didn’t matter, you couldn’t stop them even though you knew what they were going to do. Vince Lombardi would love Jonathon King.
Steeped in the noir tradition of dimly lit bars, disillusioned ex-cops, and obsessive serial killers, King’s plots are bread-and-butter fare, but he executes brilliantly and comes up a real winner.
A Killing Night features Max Freeman, the disillusioned ex-cop who has exiled himself to the Everglades west of Fort Lauderdale, who was the protagonist of The Blue Edge of Midnight, which won King an Edgar award (the mystery writers’ equivalent of an Oscar) for best first novel of 2003. In Killing, Freeman is persuaded by an ex-girl friend, a police detective, to help track down a suspected serial killer who might have been on the Philadelphia police force with Max. King cuts cinematically between Freeman and the mind of the killer, moving the reader along their parallel paths until the dramatic conclusion. Familiar Fort Lauderdale locales are visited: Lester’s, Kim’s Alley Bar, and Holiday Park, as well as the Everglades, adding to the gritty feel of the book. Locations in Philadelphia are also described with what I assume is equal authenticity. (King was a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.) Assisted when needed by a deus ex machina wealthy black lawyer friend (who stutters), Max Freeman and Detective Sherry Richards stalk the killer as he stalks another young women. The plot has some clever twists and keeps you turning the pages even as you know the specific villain will be tackled in the end, while leaving enough personal issues unresolved to make sure you will pick up the next Max Freeman novel with interest. (I will.)
The noir style, particularly when it is so deftly employed as in A Killing Night, enables secure, conventional folks like you and me to enter into a world of menace, bad habits, and bad smells without risk. Like a roller coaster ride, it gives us a frisson of fear without facing any real danger. Like the dimly lit black and white B movies which gave it its name, this genre of mystery novels allows us to see another side of our urban environment, one which is quite close to us physically, but some distance emotionally. Luckily, we have real cops to keep most of these menaces away from us, (although the wife of a friend did have a close encounter with Ted Bundy one day in Tallahassee some years ago.) It is enough for most of us to have these experiences vicariously through the talent and effort of writers like Jonathon King.
Vince Lombardi used to preach that the key to winning was not your strategy or your game plan, but execution. If your tackles tackled, your blockers blocked and your runners ran, most often you would win. The opposition knew Lombardi’s game plan: off-tackle, off-tackle, pass to the tight end, with just enough long passes to keep the defense off balance, but when his Packers were executing properly, it didn’t matter, you couldn’t stop them even though you knew what they were going to do. Vince Lombardi would love Jonathon King.
Steeped in the noir tradition of dimly lit bars, disillusioned ex-cops, and obsessive serial killers, King’s plots are bread-and-butter fare, but he executes brilliantly and comes up a real winner.
A Killing Night features Max Freeman, the disillusioned ex-cop who has exiled himself to the Everglades west of Fort Lauderdale, who was the protagonist of The Blue Edge of Midnight, which won King an Edgar award (the mystery writers’ equivalent of an Oscar) for best first novel of 2003. In Killing, Freeman is persuaded by an ex-girl friend, a police detective, to help track down a suspected serial killer who might have been on the Philadelphia police force with Max. King cuts cinematically between Freeman and the mind of the killer, moving the reader along their parallel paths until the dramatic conclusion. Familiar Fort Lauderdale locales are visited: Lester’s, Kim’s Alley Bar, and Holiday Park, as well as the Everglades, adding to the gritty feel of the book. Locations in Philadelphia are also described with what I assume is equal authenticity. (King was a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.) Assisted when needed by a deus ex machina wealthy black lawyer friend (who stutters), Max Freeman and Detective Sherry Richards stalk the killer as he stalks another young women. The plot has some clever twists and keeps you turning the pages even as you know the specific villain will be tackled in the end, while leaving enough personal issues unresolved to make sure you will pick up the next Max Freeman novel with interest. (I will.)
The noir style, particularly when it is so deftly employed as in A Killing Night, enables secure, conventional folks like you and me to enter into a world of menace, bad habits, and bad smells without risk. Like a roller coaster ride, it gives us a frisson of fear without facing any real danger. Like the dimly lit black and white B movies which gave it its name, this genre of mystery novels allows us to see another side of our urban environment, one which is quite close to us physically, but some distance emotionally. Luckily, we have real cops to keep most of these menaces away from us, (although the wife of a friend did have a close encounter with Ted Bundy one day in Tallahassee some years ago.) It is enough for most of us to have these experiences vicariously through the talent and effort of writers like Jonathon King.
posted by Jack Latona at 6:40 PM
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