Tag Archives: John Cutler

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cutler’s Bargain,’ by Colin Conway

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I think I’m done with Colin Conway’s John Cutler books.

I like author Conway’s 509 series, which is a sequence of police procedurals involving a rotating cast of Washington state cops. He’s also written a series about “the Flip-flop Detective,” which is supposed to be light in tone. The John Cutler books, on the other hand, are contemporary Noir. John Cutler’s world is grim and shadowed, full of betrayal and moral compromise. I thought things might lighten up as the character developed, but I’ve finally concluded that that’s not the intention.

In Cutler’s Bargain, book 5 in the series, John gets an offer from a client willing to pay well. She’s a wholesome-looking woman who grows marijuana in a cellar underneath a strip mall she owns. She had been keeping the operation secret, but now somebody has broken in through a window and tried (though they failed) to get downstairs into the “grow.” She wants to know who leaked the information.

John isn’t eager to get involved with illegal drugs (this book was written before legalization), but the problem is interesting and she promises to pay double. Meanwhile, a friend has asked John to talk to a boy and try to steer him away from gang involvement – something he approaches without much confidence.

Cutler’s Bargain kept my interest all through, but – as with all these books – the final result was disappointing. The story ends on a highly ambivalent note, with Cutler negotiating a resolution that merely balances one evil against another.

The writing is good (in spite of the misuse of the word “flaunt”), but I’m tired of the depressing endings. Your mileage may vary.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cutler’s Friend,’ by Colin Conway

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I like Colin Conway as a writer. One of the things I like about his work is that he generally keeps the politics low-key.

That is not true, however, of Cutler’s Friend, the third volume in his John Cutler series. The author published those first three books early in the 2000s, and the era may be part of the problem. This book is (in my opinion) more suited to the zeitgeist of that decade than to the present.

At the beginning of Cutler’s Friend, John has stabilized his life somewhat. He is now a licensed private investigator in Spokane, and he has a regular girlfriend.

He gets a visit from Mike, his former partner on the Seattle police force. Mike has, John discovers, become a pretty nasty racist, largely because his wife Tina left him for a black professional athlete. John wouldn’t care to do a favor for Mike at this point, but it’s Tina who needs help. Her new husband has been murdered, and she’s been arrested for it. Mike wants John to prove she’s innocent.

As John begins the investigation, the job raises tension with his girlfriend Erika, who is black. She starts discussing racial issues with John, and distancing herself from him. He finally realizes that he has to choose between helping an innocent woman and keeping his girlfriend.

This book pushed all my buttons – negatively. It started with a scene where John is dealing with a guy in a wig and a dress, in which he keeps condemning himself for “prejudice” when he forgets to use “her” preferred pronouns. Then we go on to the scenes with Erika, where the point seems to be that, as a miserable white man, there’s nothing John is allowed to do but kneel in repentance and apologize forever.

This bothered me a lot. Because if that’s the way the races have to relate to one another, it will always be impossible for us love each other, or even to be friends. It’s a formula for eternal racial segregation. I have to believe there’s some better way.

If I weren’t already fond of the series, I’d have dropped it with Cutler’s Friend. But I’m reading on. People learn and grow, and I see no signs of this kind of self-conscious political correctness in Colin Conway’s later work.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cutler’s Chase,’ by Colin Conway

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“What?” I asked.

“You used to be a cop.”

“And?”

“You seem to hate them.”

“I don’t hate them.” I stood. “But I hate who I became while I was one of them. That’s a truth I will never escape.”

The second novel in Colin Conway’s John Cutler series is Cutler’s Chase. This book has him back in Spokane, where he’s working as a nightclub bouncer. He’s flirting with a woman who likes him, but he’s afraid to get close to her because he’s sure she’s bound to reject him in the end. And he’s found a friend in a guy in a neighboring apartment, a retired Marine.

There is a murder, and Cutler finds himself, uncharacteristically, taking on a responsibility – for the murder victim’s dog. He’s certain who the killer is, and he won’t listen to the decent detective who asks him to stand aside and let them do their job. He gets in a lot of fights. There’s a major plot twist at the end (which I have to say I saw coming).

But Cutler’s Chase was a good book, and not as dark as the first book in the series. I recommend it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cutler’s Return,’ by Colin Conway

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I like Colin Conway’s books generally, so I figured I’d try Cutler’s Return, the first installment in his new John Cutler series. It’s rather different from his other work, and presents certain challenges.

John Cutler used to be a policeman in Seattle. His career blew up through a combination of bad luck and bad decisions. One of his bad decisions was his relationship with Paige, a stripteaser. He understood as well as anyone that there was no future with her, but she was like an addiction to him.

Since then he’s been living in the eastern part of the state, subsisting on temporary jobs. One day Paige calls him up out of the blue – she says something has been stolen from her, and she’ll pay him to come back and find it for her. He needs the money, but the chance to see Paige again is an equal draw. But when he gets back to Seattle, things start going wrong from the beginning. The detective who destroyed his career is still around, and still gunning for him. There’s a murder, and John is an obvious suspect. Everybody is lying, and John may not possess the self-mastery he’ll need to solve the mystery and keep himself out of prison.

Colin Conway knows how to write, and delivers his usual solid prose. Unsympathetic main characters are always a challenge for a writer, and it must be stated that John Cutler is often hard to like. He has major anger issues, and doesn’t always control them. However, this is the first book in a series, and it seems probable that John will be learning hard lessons as he goes on.

I also have to mention that I found the final showdown scene a little weak – it’s one of those action sequences where the hero survives almost purely through good luck.

Still, it’s a promising series. If you haven’t read Conway before, though, I’d suggest you start with something else. Cautions for language and mature themes.