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BLOOD TO DRINK
by Robert Skinner
Poisoned Pen Press, August 2001
251 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 1890208671


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Don't be put off by the title. This is not a story with vampires, it is not a horror novel. It is a mystery, a mystery in the tradition of crime fiction. Among its more important elements are a mixed-race protagonist named Wesley Farrell. Here's a protagonist with an interesting attitude, a five-year-old mystery (a shotgun murder), an attractive setting (Louisiana and New Orleans in 1939), great pacing and strong writing.

I've been to New Orleans, though not as early as the time of this novel, and if this isn't quite the way it felt, smelled and tasted, it should have been. Skinner has nailed the look, the feel, the ambience that makes New Orleans a very exotic locale. This novel offers up plenty of heat, tension, a little sex, some brutality, and the constant fetid rot of crime and corruption.

In 1934, toward the end of prohibition, the Coast Guard is saddled with the almost impossible task of trying to keep alcohol out of the United States. One of its officers is gunned down in the streets of New Orleans, in a murder that almost ends Wesley Farrell's life. For Farrell, sometime bootlegger and thief, his brief presence in the life of Coast Guard Commander George Schofield, is problematical, especially to Farrell. Most of his associates, business and otherwise look askance at his association, however tenuous, with law enforcement.

Five years after the murder, Schofield's brother comes to town to try to solve the homicide. He begins to turn over some rocks. His actions not only threaten to Farrell's illegal past but are also troubling to Farrell's conscience. He'd liked Schofield during their brief, if violent association, and he was again bothered that he'd done little to find Schofield's killer.

Larded with fascinating under and over-world characters in and out of politics and law enforcement, the dialogue rings true, the settings are correct and the overall effect is just terrific. This is a fine novel.

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, June 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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