Tag Archives: Will Harper

Fiction, Reviews

‘Guilty Money,’ by David Crosby

2 Comments

I get the feeling, as I read David Crosby’s Will Harper series, that the author wants to pay homage to John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee – Will, after all, lives on a boat in a marina in Florida. Instead of “taking his retirement in installments,” he lives the good life on an inheritance. Frankly, except for the sentiment of the thing, I almost wish he wouldn’t. Will Harper is a very different character from McGee.

In the previous installment, journalist Will saved his neighbors from being fleeced by land developers exploiting eminent domain. His girlfriend Sandy, about whom he was getting serious, rewarded him by sailing away to a new life in the Caribbean.

So as Guilty Money begins, he’s rebuilding his life (along with his boat, which got shot up in the action). He’s also acquired a new girlfriend, a girl who wants no commitment and likes to hang around the boat naked (a curiously 1970s plot element in a 21st Century book). But then a friend asks his help in getting someone out of the jail in nearby (fictional) Grove County. There the sheriff’s department, under financial pressure and tempted by plain greed, is milking the jail system for cash – particularly through failing to notify defendants of court dates, then pocketing the forfeited bail. Also they skimp on prisoners’ food, and brutalize them on top of it. There are one or two deaths, which get covered up.

With the help of a friendly (and attractive) ACLU attorney (she brags about how the ACLU defends people of all political beliefs, another dated element in the story), he plans a campaign to expose the corruption. It will get ugly – and fortunately a new ally appears, a young man who knows how to fight. A much needed addition to this cast.

At least in these early books in the series, author Crosby hasn’t yet mastered his instrument, in my opinion. His prose could use some pruning. And the politics lean left (as you no doubt guessed from this review). The theme of the story is the over-incarceration of criminals — something I’m pretty sure isn’t a problem anymore.

But there’s only one more book in the collection of three that I got for free, so I imagine I’ll read it. Guilty Money wasn’t bad.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Million Dollar Staircase,’ by David Crosby

Leave a comment

It’s one of my many moral weaknesses. Whenever I come across a Florida mystery about a detective who lives on a boat, something in my brain says, “Maybe this will be the next Travis McGee.” It never is, and the disappointment skews my critical judgment. And yet I can’t help myself.

The latest self-inflicted wound of this sort is Million Dollar Staircase, by David Crosby. It’s the first in a series starring Will Harper, a retired journalist who inherited money and chose to live aboard a houseboat in a marina in the Tampa Bay area. He’s been enjoying the maritime lifestyle and growing closer to Sandy, a beautiful French woman who runs another marina nearby. One day he finds Sandy in a celebratory mood. She just read that the town is planning to develop a river walk around her property. That will certainly bring business in!

Only it won’t. Turns out the city plans to condemn her property, and that of her neighbors, paying only current market value – though once the development begins, values will skyrocket. It also turns out a local real estate investor has bought out all the homes in the area, at depressed prices. The whole busines stinks of cronyism and corruption.

But Will has a lawyer friend who owes him a favor. He’ll sue the city for them pro bono. There’s a good chance that, if they can’t get the eminent domain process stopped, they’ll at least be able to get the business owners a more reasonable payout.

What they don’t expect is that some people are willing to kill to cover up their corruption.

Million Dollar Staircase wasn’t a bad book. I liked Will Harper and his friends, and was rooting for them. I am entirely sympathetic to those who oppose the way Eminent Domain has been abused in recent decades.

But I thought the story a little… slack. The suspense could have been ramped up more effectively, and I would have liked for Will Harper to be a little more of a fighter (in the physical sense).

But it wasn’t bad. I don’t remember much objectionable language, and the sex scenes weren’t very explicit. I downloaded a three-book package, so I’ll see how I like the next books.