REVIEWED BY BARRY GARDNER:


PETE HAUTMAN – Drawing Dead. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1993. Paperback reprint: Pocket, 1997.

   Joe Crow is an ex-cop, and an ex-coke head, and an ex-husband, too. Matter of fact, most of his life is ex-; he’s sort of at loose ends professionally and financially, not doing much of anything but playing poker and drifting along.

PETE HAUTMAN dDrawing Dead

   He’s got sort of a relationship with another ex-coke head, an entertainment agent. Joey Cadillac, down in Chicago, doesn’t have any identity problems — he’s a minor league wiseguy, with a car dealership selling cars mostly to people who need to launder cash.

   Joey’s just been ripped off on an old comic book scam, and he’s pissed. He sends a legbreaker to Minneapolis on the trail of the two scammers, who have another deal working with a stockbroker there who happens to play poker with Crow. They know his wife, too, a pheromone-emitting lady named Catfish. Yep. Then they all begin to converge.

   This is a jim-dandy first novel. It reminds me of Leonard and Westlake, and maybe just a little of Hiaasen. Hautman has a good ear for dialogue, and a good eye for the kind of people who have been knocked around somewhat.

   He tells the story from a number of different viewpoints, and keeps it moving right along. Crow is an interesting lead, competent enough to like but no superman. There is a lot of good stuff about poker and comics, and it’s credible for a change.

   This is my kind of book.

— Reprinted from Ah, Sweet Mysteries #10, November 1993.


Editorial Comment:   Pete Hautman’s book The Prop (2006) was profiled on this blog when it was nominated for Best Private Eye Paperback Original of the Year in 2007.

   While Joe Crow did not appear in The Prop, a list of his appearances since his debut in Drawing Dead can be found in this previous post.