Wed 3 Apr 2019
Archived PI Review: RICHARD HOYT – 30 for a Harry.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[8] Comments
RICHARD HOYT – 30 for a Harry. John Denson #2. M. Evans, hardcover, 1981. Penguin, paperback, 1984.
Having worked for a newspaper at one time himself, private eye John Denson is a natural to be hired by the Seattle Star to help flush out a Harry, vernacular for a crooked reporter with a habit of shaking down local business establishments.
Denison has a suspect from the start, but when the man is found murdered, the scope of his investigation is widened dramatically. The local vice industry is strongly interested in the case, and so are certain Japanese gentlemen with a finger in the area’s salmon business.
Hoyt’s first book and Denson’s case immediately preceding this one was entitled Decoys, and overall, it’s probably the stronger of the two. The approach taken this time around is considerably more direct, for one thing, with fewer layers of misdirection being applied. Hoyt has a winning way in creating well-defined characters, however — in this case those especially of the type usually found hanging around a city room. I’m already looking forward to his next one.
The John Denson series —
1. Decoys (1980)
2. Thirty for a Harry (1981)
3. The Siskiyou Two-Step (1983) aka Siskiyou (1984)
4. Fish Story (1985)
5. Whoo? (1991)
6. Bigfoot (1993)
7. Snake Eyes (1995)
8. The Weatherman’s Daughters (2003)
9. Pony Girls (2004)
April 3rd, 2019 at 5:55 pm
The Denson books were fun and Hoyt a great writer.
April 3rd, 2019 at 6:39 pm
His books were always entertaining and he usually had something socially to say.
He also wrote some spy novels about James Burlane (spelling), but I can’t remember anything about them.
April 3rd, 2019 at 6:49 pm
I remember Denson as a laid-back kind of guy, kind of a hippie, and you’re right, his books often got into social issues a lot more than most PI novels do.
There were eight James Burlane books (your spelling is correct), but I’ve never read any of them. I haven’t even read all of the Denson books, though, and I think I’d rather finish off that series first.
April 3rd, 2019 at 7:13 pm
I liked the first three a LOT. Then I think the series kind of tailed off, as if Hoyt started losing interest, though he kept on writing them. Or maybe it was just me.
April 3rd, 2019 at 7:53 pm
I have a hunch that readers lose interest in series a whole lot faster than authors do, and for a whole lot of reasons. We’re very fickle, and I say “we” very deliberately.
April 4th, 2019 at 7:21 am
No Rick, I don’t think it was you, because I felt the same. The first three or four were good, but when I tried a couple of times in later years to go back and pick up with the series, I just couldn’t get interested.
April 4th, 2019 at 8:09 am
Great minds think alike. I read the first three in this series and enjoyed them a great deal. I think I read the fourth one, but I never went beyond that.
April 4th, 2019 at 8:10 pm
After the first three … seems to be a consensus forming. If I recall I had the same reaction to the spy novels.
The more offbeat the series the more likely I will start to burn out early. There is something about classic style that seems to hold the interest longer, at least when it comes to this genre.
In Hoyt’s case I notice a fairly long downtime between the third book and the fourth. I wonder if he ran out of things to say with Denson and had to fulfill a contract when he had tired of the character.