Tue 22 Aug 2017
An Archived PI Mystery Review: RAY RING – Peregrine Dream.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
RAY RING – Peregrine Dream. Henry Dyer #2. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1990. No paperback edition.
What Henry Dyer is, when it comes down to it, is your basic open range environmentalist PI. He lives in Tucson, formerly worked for the Arizona Department of Game and Fish, and this, his second adventure, centers around a pair of kidnapped falcons — and murder. (There is apparently a thriving black market in rare animals, especially those of an endangered species.)
The story is not all that complicated, merely cluttered. Lots of characters, including Dyer’s former girl friend. She is about to get married to someone else, but she is still deeply involved in Dyer’s life. There are also some fairly ugly villains and lots of intense action. Solving the mystery sometimes comes in second best.
Bibliographic Notes: The first Henry Dyer novel was Telluride Smile (1988). There was not to be another, but Ray Ring, a noted award-winning journalist, did write a very noirish third crime novel called Arizona Kiss (1991).
August 22nd, 2017 at 6:14 pm
I wonder if Henry Dyer was the first “environmentalist PI.”
In fact I also wonder if he may be the first and only.
August 22nd, 2017 at 8:43 pm
Wasn’t Richard Hoyt’s John Denson also an “environmentalist PI”?
August 22nd, 2017 at 9:17 pm
Well, close, maybe. I’d be more definitive if I’d actually read any, but I’ve never had the pleasure.
August 22nd, 2017 at 9:35 pm
He was more of a laid back kind of PI, but I believe at least one and maybe more of his stories revolved around environmental concerns. One (working off of memory) had to do with cutting of trees where the spotted owl was known to be nesting.
August 22nd, 2017 at 10:23 pm
Denson was at least environmentally friendly as were Lew Archer and Travis McGee. There was at least one environmentalist sleuth before this, can’t find the author’s name or the character, but one title was THE TURQUOISE DRAGON and the other about a parrot.
August 22nd, 2017 at 10:43 pm
Hubin to the rescue. An author and detective totally new to me:
WALLACE, DAVID RAINS (1945- )
*The Turquoise Dragon (Sierra Club, 1985, hc) [George Kilgore; California] Bodley Head, 1986.
*The Vermilion Parrot (Sierra Club, 1991, hc) [George Kilgore; California]
August 23rd, 2017 at 6:28 am
That Richard Hoyt book was WHOO?
August 23rd, 2017 at 6:57 pm
I don’t remember if ever used in the books but I would think Roger L. Simon’s Moses Wine would be. The concerns for the environment dates back a long way. There is William Wordsworth in the late 19th century, but he failed to write any murder mysteries. I am willing to bet somewhere in all the mysteries during and after the industrial revolution someone wrote a mystery with a detective concerned for the environment.