Wed 22 Aug 2018
A PI Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: LES ROBERTS – The Lake Effect.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
LES ROBERTS – The Lake Effect. Milan Jacovich #5. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 2000.
I’m continually bemused by the fact that everyone doesn’t share my opinion that Les Roberts is in the top rank of currently practicing PI writers. Over the last two or three years I don’t think that anyone in that group other than Larry Block has written as consistently well as he has.
Cleveland PI Milan Jacovich owes someone a favor. He doesn’t like owing favors in general, and he really doesn’t like this one, because it’s to the heir of Cleveland’s reigning capo. The payback seems harmess enough: Jacovich is to act as security consultant to a mayoral political campaign in one of Cleveland’s affluent suburbs. Milan can’t figure out why this mobster wants him there, but it doesn’t take him long to put his talents to good use.
Jacovich is one of the best-characterized of today’s PI’s to me. He’s bright, and he’s tough, and he has a stern, somewhat inflexible moral code that gives him — and others — problems at times. Personal morality is a theme that pervades all of Roberts’ fiction, and to his credit it is never dealt with in a simplistic fashion.
The philosophical underpinnings are never obtrusive, though, and Roberts tells a well-paced story in excellent prose. He handles all aspects of the novelist’s craft well, but his strengths are his characters, his prose, and the fine sense of place that permeates his books, particularly in the case of Jacovich’s Cleveland, which he obviously loves.
This another good one from a very good writer.
The Milan Jacovich series —
Pepper Pike (1988)
Full Cleveland (1989)
Deep Shaker (1991)
The Cleveland Connection (1993)
The Lake Effect (1994)
The Duke Of Cleveland (1995)
Collision Bend (1996).
Cleveland Local (1997).
A Shoot in Cleveland (1998).
The Best Kept Secret (1999).
The Indian Sign (2000).
The Dutch (2001)
The Irish Sports Pages (2002)
King of the Holly Hop (2008)
The Cleveland Creep (2011) !
Whiskey Island (2012)
Win, Place or Die (2013; written with Dan S. Kennedy).
The Ashtabula Hat Trick (2015)
August 23rd, 2018 at 8:01 pm
Another good one that came at the tail end of my private eye phase when I had really trailed off. A good writer though and one of the better sleuths of the new regional sub genre.
August 23rd, 2018 at 8:53 pm
I slacked off on reading mysteries altogether around this time myself, and while I thought I’d catch up someday, I never have. I’ve read the first three or four of these, but beyond that, they’re all in my To Be Read pile.
Which is not really a pile, exactly. More like a basement and garage full of books. In boxes.
August 23rd, 2018 at 8:56 pm
PS. Barry was right. The three or four I did read were very good. I don’t believe I made it to this one.
August 24th, 2018 at 10:40 am
Absolutely, Roberts was very good indeed. Like you, Steve, I read the first few then got sidetracked. I don’t think I got to this one, but now want to go to the shelves and pull one to put on the smallish Read Immediately pile (about a dozen books, as opposed to the whole rest of the house).