Thu 8 Nov 2018
Archived Review: BILL CRIDER – Dying Voices.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
BILL CRIDER – Dying Voices. Carl Burns #2. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1989. No paperback edition.
A return visit with Carl Burns, English professor at Hartley Gorman College, somewhere in Texas. (Well, Pecan City, wherever that is.) He’s put in charge of a seminar honoring HGC’s most famous former faculty member, bestselling author Edward Street, a man hardly changed by the success he’s had since.
He’s till as obnoxious as ever, that is, and he’s threatening to wrote another blockbuster novel, this one based on his days at HGC, truthfully or not. He’s found dead the next morning. The killer is easy to spot but the laugh on every page makes this one next to impossible to resist.
I should warn you, though, that some of the jokes and stories are of a decidedly academic nature, and the one on page 117 is so technical that I confess I still haven’t been able to figure it out.
The Carl Burns series —
1. One Dead Dean (1988)
2. Dying Voices (1989)
3. A Dangerous Thing (1994)
4. Dead Soldiers (2004)
November 8th, 2018 at 11:33 pm
I’d have to say that it’s a bad thing that here it is almost 30 years later, and I’ve still read only the first two Carl Burns books. On the other hand, that also means that I have the last two to look forward to, doesn’t I?
November 9th, 2018 at 10:09 pm
Missed these, have to look them up.
Damn I miss Bill.
November 9th, 2018 at 10:42 pm
As a writer Bill will be best remembered for his Dan Rhodes series, but I obviously enjoyed this one quite a bit. Finding copies of books 3 and 4 should not be difficult to do, and I plan to, right away.