This book tries to do too much. The author wasn't sure which period he really wanted to write about and then sort of slammed them all together in a mish-mash of events that were a mixed bag. He starts off in the early 20th century, eventually moving to World War I, the Roaring 20's and then spends most of the time in the early 1940's. Granted, the mystery does go back quite a ways and SOME of the information\story had to be told in order for the author to treat the reader fairly.The mystery itself is decent and the characters are all well-drawn and carefully and uniquely presented. There is a mystery about a decades old shootout that isn't what one can expect, though the author does a good job of dropping some clues for the reader. Instead, the author creates a slam bang action novel with a mystery bringing on the action. The action is good, but there's a bit too much of it, causing me to feel that the author may have been getting paid by the word or the chapter-- yes. some of it felt like filler material.Finally, either the author was attempting to use a ficitonal town (that had a real-life town's name) in California, or was so confused about California geography that he caused some real confusion in my mind. Eureka is above San Francisco, not on the Central Coast, I think.. and to have it somehow set in the general vicinity of San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria was very, very confusing to me. The town later had its name changed to San Pietro, and I can't find that in a google search. The author seems to have a few anachronistic things to say. In one place he speaks of re-training a dog as "Reprogramming" which I am not certain was a phrase a 1940ish Cop would use. It was allright, but nothing to recommend to other readers.
I picked up the audiobook of this and though it was an interesting story, the audiobook had a lot to be desired. There were lots of inconsistencies which had me thinking WTH. At one point Zeke, the lead cop was on the phone with a sheriff Brodie, and something was said about the look on Brodie's face when Zeke gave him some news. This book took place in 1941, I highly doubt they had phones capable of visuals. It happened more than once and was rather disturbing. Upon picking up the actual book, I noticed that these incidents actually happened face to face and whomever did the abridgment, just did a crappy job. Oh well it didn't detract from the story just sidelined it a bit.A woman ends up dead in her bathtub and detective Zeke Bannon and Ski Agassi grab the case. Zeke immediately felt something was off with this scenario and took it upon himself to investigate. Turns out the dead woman, appeared out of nowhere roughly 20 years ago with a boatload of cash. The investigation is interesting and huge leaps of faith are taken by Bannon. His insight is amazing and his determination to ferret out the culprit is unending. I enjoyed the story but in hindsight, should have read the book and gotten the full effect. So if you have the option of an abridgment or the real thing, stick with the real thing on this one as the abridgment cuts out too many of the details and the story just doesn't flow properly.
Do You like book Eureka (2003)?
I thought I had read all of Diehl's novels, but came across this one at a library book sale. I believe it was his last completed work before his death in 2006. Though drastically different from his earlier books, I still enjoyed this tale that began at the turn of the century and ended after World War II. Both "heroes" were likable in their own way with perhaps a bit more in common than either of them realized.Given the opportunity to ask the author a question, I would do so about a couple of loose ends, but there being no possibility of that happening, I will bump my rating from the 3.5 stars I would have given to 4 stars and perhaps make plans to go back and read some of Diehl's more outstanding novels.
—L8blmr
I like William Diehl, all he way back to Sharkys Machine, Thai Horse etc. He has a facination with World War 1 and in particular Belleau Wood. Be that as it may, this again is a great book. When a book i read ends and i go back and reread to find all the clues i missed it's a good read to me. As always at the books end, the denument gives the final answers, and not the ones you were expecting. Great factual basis with characters from the past briefly coming to life, mixed with the fantasy world of the book.Great read again.
—Barry Simiana
Pretty standard cop novel, with the somewhat novel twist of starting out with several much earlier vignettes in which the main characters are seen in the wild west and then in WW1. These are presumably intended to provide us with backstory for the purpose of making the characters richer. To that extent, the device was only somewhat successful, as I felt the story would have been pretty much as good if Diehl had foregone that initial 75 pages or so of earlier stuff. Overall, a decent cop story, with plenty of thugs, shootouts, etc. Enjoyable if less than deep reading.
—Brian Kenneth Swain
