Similar to Little Girl Lost, but not as
good. Again we are in present time in NYC with lonesome PI on the case. His
name is Payton Sherwood, he’s a washed up investigator waiting in his shabby
office without furniture and slow dial-up internet connection waiting for the
clients that never come. He used to work for some big detective agency under
mentorship of his friend Matt but was fired few years ago after fucking up
simple surveillance job. Number of detectives involved rises to three
immediately in the first chapter, because there is also legendary old school
sleuth George “The Owl” Rowell who wants to employ our hero for simple job of
“flushing a tail out into the open”. But detective count is quickly restored
back to two, because Owl is killed (as he is no loser, it is probably from here
that title comes from) even before he can fully brief Payton about the job. But
he smells big money and has no other work anyway, so fun can begin.
We find ourselves in the usual hard-boiled underworld
of film stars, drugs, corporate crime, kids trafficking and femme fatales. And
it’s all happening rapidly fast as everything takes place in one day. Story
gets quite complicated quickly and there are some plot holes, but they are not
too big and the whole impression is still okay at the end.
There are some other flaws. Biggest one is
total absence of police. At the end body count arises to nearly 10 and in all
this time there’s no sight of the NYPD which seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?
Second one, maybe even more important, is lack of motive that drives our hero
so hard. He wasn’t even a friend of the dead detective, hasn’t received any
money for the investigation and yet he let himself be beaten, chased and so on.
Another thing I’ve found a bit annoying is
authors near obsession with New York. There are just too many of those “I went
to street X along venue Y crossing park Z” and there’s even short paragraph
related to 9/11 (fortunately not related to our story, war on terror doesn’t
take place here). It probably makes reading more interesting for residents of
the Big Apple, but I’m certainly not intrigued enough to search these places on the Google
maps.
3/5
Facts:
3/5
Facts:
Hero: Payton Sherwood, PI
Location: New York City
Body count: 8
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