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I picked this one up on the strength of a cover blurb by Michael Connelly, who doesn't seem to be Stephen Kingish in handing them out.  It's too bad that Connelly had already used the name Hieronymous Bosch for his hero, because Shannon's view of LA is even darker & more forbidding.

Jack Liffey's wife and little girl have left him & now all that he has left is his ability to find missing kids.  Here, just such a search turns ugly when the child's mother is killed.  Liffey ends up on the periphery of a corrupt development project that folks are willing to kill to coverup & he has to extract himself from the morass.

It all makes for a very bleak noir mystery.

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (B)


Websites:

See also:

Private Eyes
Book-related and General Links:

GENERAL
    -African American Mystery Page
    -Black Street Fiction
    -Crime Writers (David King)
    -Dangerous Dames: A Timeline of Some of the Major Female Eyes (Thrilling Detectives)
    -Edgar Award: Best First Novel
    -Film Noir and Pulp Fiction
    -A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection
    -Gumshoe Site
    -Hardboiled : online reference site for all things noir
    -Hardboiled Heaven
    -Hard Boiled Noir Webring
    -Martin's Film Noir Page
    -Mysterious Home Page
    -MysteryNet.com: The Online Mystery Network
    -Mystery Net Awards Page
    -No Night Sweats
    -RARA-AVIS : mailing list devoted to the discussion of hardboiled (and noir) fiction
    -The Reader's Corner presents  Female Sleuths
    -Thrilling Detective Website
    -Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang
    -Women of Mystery (Bookaholic)

If you liked Concrete River, try:

Campbell, Robert
    -In La-la Land We Trust   (Read Orrin's review, Grade: B)
    -Alice in La-la Land
    -Sweet La-la Land

Chandler, Raymond
    -Trouble Is My Business
    -The Big Sleep
    -Farewell My Lovely
    -The Lady in the Lake
    -The High Window
    -The Little Sister
    -Playback

Connelly, Michael
    -The Black Echo
    -The Black Ice
    -The Concrete Blonde
    -The Last Coyote
    -Trunk Music
    -The Poet

Ellroy, James
    -Black Dahlia
    -The Big Nowhere
    -LA Confidential
    -White Jazz
    -American Tabloid

Hammett, Dashiell
    -The Maltese Falcon     (one of Orrin's Top Ten Novels) (Read Orrin's review, Grade: A+)

MacDonald, Ross
(Lew Archer Mysteries)
    -Black Money
    -The Chill
    -The Drowning Pool
    -The Far Side of the Dollar
    -The Galton Case     (Read Orrin's review, Grade: A+)
    -The Moving Target
    -The Underground Man
    -The Wycherly Woman
    -The Zebra-Striped Hearse
    -Sleeping Beauty

Masterson, Whit
    -Touch of Evil    (Read Orrin's review, Grade: B)

Mosley, Walter
(Easy Rawlins Mysteries)
    -Devil in a Blue Dress
    -A Red Death
    -White Butterfly
    -Black Betty
    -A Little Yellow Dog