Thu 14 Sep 2017
A PI Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: BENJAMIN SCHUTZ – Mexico Is Forever.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
BENJAMIN SCHUTZ – Mexico Is Forever. Leo Haggerty #6. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1994. No paperback edition.
For someone who has won both Shamus and Edgar Awards, Schutz isn’t all that well known. After the traumatic events that took place in A Fistful of Empty, I wondered where he would go with Haggerty, and even if he would. As you can see he has, for at least one more book.
Leo is carrying on with his private detective agency in Washington, DC, still numbed emotionally from the events of the recent past but making do. His current case involves establishing the (preferably false) identity of a young female claimant to a modestly large estate. He manages to pierce the facade of the beautiful and enigmatic woman, but in doing so finds yet anther wall, and behind this one are secrets that in the bringing to light reach the opposite coast and threaten the lives of not only the woman but Haggerty himself.
For the most part, I think this is one of the better of the Haggerty books. It is atypically for Schutz non-violent until the end of the book, and features a good bit of realistic detective work that is reminiscent of Joe Gores’ DKA stories. Not too surprisingly. Gores’ characters play bit parts in this story.
Schutz’s first-person narrative skills are excellent, and his prose is clean and lean. While characterization is brief except for Haggerty and the mysterious woman, it’s adequate to the story, and excellent for the two.
I’m not quite sure what I think about the ending, though it was certainly interesting, and once again raises questions about where we go from here. I understand that Schutz’s next book is non-Haggerty, so we may have to wait a while for an answer.
The Leo Haggerty series —
NOVELS
Embrace the Wolf (1985)
All the Old Bargains (1985)
A Tax in Blood (1987)
The Things We Do For Love (1989)
A Fistful of Empty (1991)
Mexico Is Forever (1994)
SHORT STORIES
“Mary, Mary, Shut the Door” (1992, Deadly Allies)
“What Goes Around” (1994, Deadly Allies II)
“Lost and Found” (1999, Death Cruise)
COLLECTION
Mary, Mary, Shut the Door (2005; includes among others the three Haggerty stories above)
September 14th, 2017 at 11:14 pm
A good series that I neglected because of burn out.
September 14th, 2017 at 11:23 pm
Likewise. I read the first but don”t remember any of the other titles. But Barry was right. Even at the time the Haggerty books weren’t much talked about.
September 15th, 2017 at 5:43 am
I know I read them all at the time, but at this distance I don’t remember anything about them at all.
September 15th, 2017 at 8:25 am
The series hit its stride with THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE. It and the next two books were excellent PI stuff in the Robert B. Parker vein.