Tue 26 Jan 2016
I picked up used copies of two novels the other day by an author I’d somehow missed, Bernard Schopen, who writes about a Reno, Nevada detective named Jack Ross. The books are The Big Silence (1989) and The Desert Look (1990).
They’re not bad, strongly reminiscent of Ross Macdonald in how they deal with crimes of the past that haunt the present, but Jack Ross is much more of a presence than Archer. The prose is powerful in places, particularly lyrical in describing the desert, but overwritten in others.
The stories he tells are both tortuous and tortured, at times making Macdonald seem cheerful in comparison. Both were published by Mysterious Press in hardback and paper. I’m unaware of others, but these are worth checking out if PIs are your thing.
Bibliographic Update: There was a third book in the series: The Iris Deception (University of Nevada Press, softcover, 1996).
January 26th, 2016 at 6:03 pm
I’ll have to hunt around and find a copy of my review of the first Jack Ross. I don’t remember all of what I said, but from what I do recall, Barry nailed it in his comments here.
January 26th, 2016 at 6:10 pm
I read the first one, but I think the overwritten part turned me off. By 89 I was seriously cutting back on PI novels anyway.