Cold Dark Lies

Martin Preuss isn’t exactly the cigar-chomping, fedora-wearing, gun-toting, wise-cracking private eye popularized so many decades ago.  Like many classic private eye stories, he’s asked to investigate what happened in a seedy motel room filled with drugs, sex, violence, and blackmail.  He ends up jousting with mobsters, with nightclub bouncers, and with henchmen that have their own ideas of how to carry out orders.  

Yet, Preuss is a complex man with modern problems.  He nearly ended it all after his wife, following an argument, stormed away in her car only to become mincemeat on the highway.  It was his younger son Toby who pulled him back from the edge, his younger son, developmentally disabled, on a feeding tube, in a group home with round the clock care.  What a juxtaposition between his family responsibilities to Toby and the seedy dirty world private investigators travel.  

As far as the investigation goes, don’t make any predictions or assumptions about what happened or why.  None of it gets resolved as you think it will.  The writing is smooth.  This one’s a powerful thrill ride from start to finish.  It may be number six in the series, but there are no prerequisites to reading it.  

Many thanks to the publisher for providing a copy for review.

This was quite a dark tale, the title is a clue into the theme of the story. The Cold Dark Lies are the ones people tell each other and themselves. Our hero is a PI with a brain damaged son who he adores and tries to spend as much time as possible with; his boss has a secret and he has a major case to investigate which takes him into the seedier side of town.

My First book from this msytery series by Donald Levin. Not gonna lie, he is an amazing writer. I'm definitely hooked ny the story partly in the middle through the end. I still follow through all the characters so I can understand them well. It hit me up so good and looking for more mystery like this.