Herbie's Game (A Junior Bender Mystery)
Junior Bender, a fixer in the criminal underworld, investigates the death of his mentor.
Work Information
The death of his burglary mentor pulls him into the mystery of a dangerous list.
Herbie's Game is a work by Timothy Hallinan. Junior Bender, a fixer in the criminal underworld, investigates the death of his mentor.
Review Summaries
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Readers value the depth of treatment and the firm structure. Some may find the specialist focus or length demanding, but the work is supported by its affection for the subject and substantial reading experience.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Soho Crime
- Published
- 2014-07-15
- Pages
- 400 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.46 x 3.38 x 19.79 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781616954291
- ISBN-10
- 1616954299
- Price
- 10640 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Mystery & Thrillers/Mystery/Hard-Boiled
Junior Bender, the clown prince of crime fiction, returns in his most hardboiled adventure yet—a tale that will take Junior Bender deep into a murderous conspiracy in present day Los Angeles and uncover an increasingly confusing legacy of his burglar-mentor, Herbie Mott, who until very recently was always one-step-ahead of just about everybody. It’s everyday business when Wattles, the San Fernando Valley’s top “executive crook,” sets up a hit. He establishes a chain of criminals to pass along the instructions and the money, ensuring that the hitter doesn’t know who hired him. But one day Wattles finds his office safe open and a single item missing: the piece of paper on which he has written the names of the crooks in the chain. When people associated with the chain begin to pop up dead, the only person Wattles can approach to solve his problem is Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for crooks. But Junior already knows exactly who took Wattles’s list: the signature is too obvious. It was Herbie Mott, Junior’s burglar mentor—and when Junior seeks him out to discuss the missing list, he finds Herbie very unpleasantly murdered. Junior follows the links in the chain back toward the killer, and as he does, he learns disturbing secrets from Herbie’s hidden past.
Timothy Hallinan is the Lefty Award-winning and Edgar-, Shamus-, and Macavity-nominated author of sixteen widely praised books, including The Fear Artist , Crashed , Little Elvises , and The Fame Thief . After years of working in Hollywood, television, and the music industry, he now writes full-time. He divides his time between California and Thailand.
Reviews
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Herbie’s Game
Another good read by TIMOTHY HALLINAN
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but Junior is a great character and the story is solid
The lighter end of Hallinan's spectrum, but Junior is a great character and the story is solid. Great series.
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Games that should not be played by amateurs
Of Timothy Hallinan's three excellent crime series (to date), the Junior Bender collection is the wittiest and most free-wheeling. The protagonist is professional burglar, albeit one with a conscience, who operates more frequently as an unlicensed private detective. His workplace is the greater Los Angeles metro area and author Hallinan has the same unerring feel for the place as Michael Connelly and one or two other LA-based writers. In "Herbie's Game", there is a smart plot with the usual wonderful characters. In this novel, Junior is largely focused on tracking down the killer of his longtime burglary mentor, Herbie Mott. While he uses the term "game" to mean burglary at the outset of his investigation, Junior gradually discovers that Herbie was actually into far more than expert house-breaking. One of the things I like most about Timothy Hallinan's books (all of them really) is the sense of outrage at social injustice that is integral, in varying degrees to all of them. The author is a master at working in themes of basic ethics and the possibility of redemption in most of his novels. The result is added satisfaction for the reader in addition to the superior entertainment provided by great writing.
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This author just gets better and better
Another winner. This author just gets better and better. His unlikely and unusual hero is a joy, the supporting cast add to the joy, the plot is a page turner and yet regularly does not go where you expect. It is, like all his books, a thoroughly good read (I pre-ordered this in hardback in the belief that it would be worth it and, as ever, it was). But it is the writing that makes it - the quirky style and descriptions that just submerge the reader in the world created is a constant delight. Highly recommended. Buy one of his books and you will want to read them all.
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Four Stars
Enjoyable crime caper series