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BLOWBACK
by Bill Pronzini
Random House, July 2002
148 pages
$OP
ISBN: 0881500348


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

He's just gotten some bad news, and its impact has made him immobile and fearful. He's always known that the racking cough was not just something that was going to go away, that the ache in his chest was indicative of something more serious. And now he's found out that he has a lesion on his lung which could be malignant. He's set to sit and wait and do nothing else until he gets the results, but is swayed into action by a call from an old buddy of his from the service, Harry Burroughs.

Harry has an isolated fishing camp in Northern California. Currently, he has several people in residence. Recent events have convinced him that the place is a powderkeg waiting to erupt into violence. Therefore, the call to Nameless. What Nameless finds on his arrival is a simmering situation, mostly caused by the presence of a very erotic woman by the name of Angela who is there with her extremely jealous husband, Ray, who is even more combustible because he's a heavy drinker. Angela is a woman who plays sweet but gets deep underneath a man's skin and is nowhere near as innocent as she would have folks believe.

And then the murders start. The first doesn't seem to have anything to do with the situation when a rug dealer is killed in his van. But then the inhabitants of the camp become targets, including Nameless. He faces more than the usual share of danger as he is entombed in a cave. The book has a little bit of everything-sexual intrigue, theft, murder, violence-all leavened by Nameless searching for the truth in a high tension environment.

Blowback is not one of the better entries in this series. As always, the writing is top notch; but the book itself is inconsequential, almost like an extended short story. It's not difficult for the reader to determine who the bad guy is. The setting is almost like a locked room with a limited number of suspects, some of whom can be immediately discounted. I wouldn't make an effort to seek this book out unless you want to do so in order to read the complete series.

Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, July 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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