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Sometimes there\u2019s nothing much really wrong with a book<\/strong> except that it annoys me. That was my problem with Dead Wood<\/em>, the first volume of the Grosse Pointe Pulp<\/a> <\/em>series, by Dan Ames.<\/p>\n The hero, John Rockne, was once a Grosse Pointe policeman \u2013 very briefly. Then one night he made a well-meaning decision that cost a man his life, and him his career. Today he\u2019s a private investigator in the upscale Detroit suburb. He\u2019s married and a father.<\/p>\n He gets a visit from a retired Country music star. The man\u2019s daughter, a brilliant guitar maker, has been brutally murdered. The police blame a junkie who broke into her workshop, but the old man is sure it was his daughter\u2019s boyfriend, whom he never liked.<\/p>\n John\u2019s investigation leads him into the world of music recording, where the daggers in the back are not always metaphorical. He also comes face to face with a very old enemy.<\/p>\n This synopsis makes the story sound fairly grim, but in fact the tone is relatively light \u2013 which was one of the problems for me. John Rockne (who has a Norwegian name but never mentions being Norwegian, only one of the things I didn\u2019t like about him) is a wiseacre. Now wiseacrey is a cherished tradition among hard-boiled private eyes. But you\u2019ve got to earn the right to it, and John doesn\u2019t (in my opinion). He\u2019s not really hard-boiled. In fact, he\u2019s kind of a wimp, constantly nagged by his wife and his older sister. He doesn\u2019t show much sign of fighting ability \u2013 but nevertheless manages to survive, apparently mostly by luck, even when set upon by a pair of bodybuilders. In a related issue, he suffers from Fictional Transitory Injury Syndrome, the condition common to TV and movie heroes, where a guy suffers fairly serious injuries one day, and then seems entirely untroubled by them the day after.<\/p>\n On the plus side, I thought the prose wasn’t bad, and the ending of the book was quite affecting.<\/p>\n But, although this is a three-book set, I didn\u2019t like Dead Wood<\/em> enough to read the follow-up books. At least for now. Your mileage may deviate.<\/p>\n Cautions for language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes there\u2019s nothing much really wrong with a book except that it annoys me. That was my problem with Dead Wood, the first volume of the Grosse Pointe Pulp series, by Dan Ames. The hero, John Rockne, was once a Grosse Pointe policeman \u2013 very briefly. Then one night he made a well-meaning decision that … Continue reading ‘Dead Wood,’ by Dan Ames<\/span>