Sat 28 May 2016
MATT & BONNIE TAYLOR – Neon Flamingo. Dodd Mean, hardcover, 1987. St. Martin’s, paperback, June 1990.
This is the first in the series of three Palmer Kingston novels. I posted Barry Gardner’s review of the third, Neon Dancers, a couple of weeks ago. He liked it well enough that when I had the chance to read this one, I couldn’t turn it down.
To save myself of thinking up the same words to describe the two main series characters, both newspaper reporters, I’ve decided to use Barry’s instead: “Kingston is something of an eccentric, living in a garish mansion surrounded by neon signs and antique cars. [His lover and rival, A. J.] Egan is a tenant in the mansion. If it all sounds a little strange, well, it is.”
This novel chronicles the first time they met, with A. J. moving in and their working on the same case together, but from opposite sides of the fence, working as they do for two directly competing newspapers.
They make for a compatible if somewhat lightweight couple who somehow drift into sharing the same bed, on occasion, but I didn’t find the case they’re working on to be of much interest. The killing of a retired police captain seems to Palmer to be directly connected to a kidnapping that took place some 20 years when he was the new kid in town. I didn’t make the same jump in logic as quickly as he did. I found myself continually playing catch-up and never feeling as filled in as I thought I should.
Most of the characters are only there. None stand out, not even the two leading ones. The book’s not bad, the setting is fine — a mid-sized town on the Florida coast — but the story is weak, and it’s tough to get over that. All in all, it’s a book that could have been a whole lot better.
May 29th, 2016 at 1:25 am
Imagine a mid sized Florida town with two newspapers to be rivals today? Times, they are a changin’ fast.
May 29th, 2016 at 5:47 am
When I read your comment, David, I realized that you sort of caught me there. This goes along with the fact that the characters are so nebulous. I *don’t* know how big the towns are, and in fact when I went back to look, they were two towns, New Seville and Marlinsport, one across the bay from each other. When I wrote the review, my sense was that they were both small towns, but I decided to write “mid-sized” because how else could they each have newspapers? Thinking about it now, they may have been intended to be Miami and Miami Beach. or maybe they *were* small, and you’re right, times have changed in 30 years.