REVIEWED BY BARRY GARDNER:


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.

— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #13, June 1994.


     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)