Thanks to Severn House and Netgalley for a copy of Lucky Bones by Michael Wiley in exchange for an honest review.
Lucky Bones by Michael Wiley
Genre: Crime/Noir
Publisher: Severn House
Publication Date: August 4, 2020. (Available on Kindle on June 1, 2020.)
A case of stolen shoes leads maverick Chicago PI Sam Kelson into something far darker and deeper in the second of this hardhitting crime noir series.
“My boyfriend’s been stealing my Jimmy Choos.”
Genevieve Bower has hired private investigator Sam Kelson to recover her stolen shoes from her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. The problem is that no one’s seen Genevieve’s boyfriend for the past two weeks.
Events take a disturbing twist when, in his search for the shoes, Kelson comes across a body, shot in the head. A clear-cut case of suicide – or is it? Has Kelson’s client been wholly honest with him? What is this case really about?
At the same time, an explosion rips through one of the city’s public libraries, leaving a friend’s nephew critically injured. Could there be a connection? If there is, Kelson’s determined to find it. But Kelson’s not like other investigators. Taking a bullet in the brain during his former career as a Chicago cop, he suffers from disinhibition: he cannot keep silent or tell lies when questioned – and his involuntary outspokenness is about to lead him into dangerous waters . . . (from Amazon blurb)
My Thoughts
I absolutely loved the first book in Michael Wiley’s Sam Kelson series, Trouble in Mind, so I had high expectations for this book. A bit of trepidation, too: the first book was funny and off-beat, with a hard core crime for the talkative PI to solve. Could the second book like up to my expectations?
Not quite, but pretty darned close.
Characters
The characters are fabulous. Wiley has a knack of creating quirky, endearing characters who are easy to root for, even when they’re running afoul of the law.
We were introduced to some of Sam Kelson’s buddies in Trouble in Mind, and here, we see even more of them. There’s one-armed Marty, always running slightly outside the law, his nephew Neto, who’s too smart for his own good, and DeMarcus Rodman, who could snap a person in two with his little finger. Rodman’s girlfriend Cindi, a nurse, turns out to be a badass herself.
Genevieve turns out to be a complicated woman. Without telling spoilers, I’ll simply say that I felt sympathy for her, though I didn’t always understand her actions.
And Sam, dear Sam. Always running his mouth, always inappropriate in conversation, always telling the truth–at least the truth as he sees it. After all, a bullet through the head changes one’s perspective on reality.
In a genre with lots of the strong, silent type who lie and keep secrets buried six feet under, Sam Kelson’s open, talkative nature is a welcome change. The man talks to anyone and anything, including his kittens and blank walls. But he never seems absurd. Wiley makes certain that Sam is a fully-developed character, not simply a 2-dimensional character based on this unique mental impairment.
Plot
The plot starts off with Jimmy Choos shoes but takes a dark turn. Soon Sam is investigating a dead body, an explosion that leaves multiple people dead and injured, and financial fraud perpetuated by some powerful people. He’s a pest to the police force of course, and despite being a former cop, they don’t want his “help”. After all, what could a brain damaged, blabbering private investigator do that they can’t?
As it turns out, lots of things.
Wiley has plenty of surprises in store. Some things seemed predictable to me, but Wiley managed to twist them in such a way that they seemed unexpected. But even when I was able to accurately predict what might happen, it didn’t make the story any less enjoyable or the turn of events less dramatic. There were many things, though, that I didn’t expect!
Concerns
One thing that made the first book so memorable was that the crime was personal for Sam. Yes, a lot of PIs/investigator types in crime fiction solve personal crimes: family members, close friends, etc. But Trouble in Mind featured a crime that left Sam with a bullet hole through his head, which in turn led to his inability to control emotions, stop talking, or lie. In other words, this crime literally changed who he was as a person. You really can’t get much more personal than that. It was this immediacy of the crime’s impact that helped strengthen the story.
Here, though, the crime is still personal. But it’s different type of personal: a friend and his nephew need help. This is more in line with what I’ve read in other crime/mystery novels. It doesn’t have that same immediacy that the bullet-through-the-head did. That’s not bad, only different. I didn’t feel the same level of got-to-read-this-book that I did with the first one. (I still felt it! Just not at the same intensity.)
This investigation also seemed to feature the group’s efforts to solve the crime more than Sam’s individual efforts. Given the situation, that was inevitable. But I’d like to see Sam doing more on his own in future books.
Overall, this was a terrific novel. It does contain some adult situations, but Michael Wiley treats them with respect and never goes into detail. I recommend this to anyone who loves noir and crime novels.