Wed 18 Nov 2020
Archived PI Mystery Review: REED STEPHENS – The Man Who Killed His Brother.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
REED STEPHENS – The Man Who Killed His Brother. Mick Axbrewder #1. Ballantine, paperback original, 1980. Forge, hardcover, 2002; Tor, paperback, 2003, the latter as by Stephen R. Donaldson.
Introducing a new private eye, Mick “Brew†Axbrewder, a non-licensed alcoholic who scrapes out a living doing legwork for Ginny Fistoulari, owner and operator of Fistoulari Investigations. The reasons for the title and for his unusual non-employed state of drunken stupor are one and the same – five years ago he accidentally shot and killed his brother, a cop named Rick.
Since he tells his own story, there is a distinct note of whininess that permeates the opening introductions. His brother’s thirteen-year-old daughter has mysteriously disappeared, however, and when he discovers it and the action picks up, he seems for a while to feel less sorry for himself.
Together, he and Ginny discover there has been an epidemic of missing young girls, although the police department has quietly kept a lid on the news. Axbrewder’s presence on the case promises to change all that, not to everyone’s delight.
While in general the characters are shallow and predictable, the events that follow are tough and gritty. When Axbrewder is not engulfed in self-pity, he functions with rough-hewn directness and urgency. He’s not a great thinker, though. Maybe it’s the effect of being forced to sober up so quickly, but it takes a long while before he puts the clues he finds together.
Will he be a new series character? He could be, but a sequel of any sort at all would have to be built on a new motivation. If not, there is no way possible it could have some of the impact built into this one. It is as if all of Stephens’ eggs were in but one basket.
Rating: B
A LATER NOTE: I’ve since been informed that the author is also Stephen R. Donaldson, a new writer who has done a trilogy of well-regarded fantasy novels reprinted by this same publisher.
The Brewster & Fistoulari series —
1. The Man Who Killed His Brother (1980)
2. The Man Who Risked His Partner (1984)
3. The Man Who Tried to Get Away (1990)
4. The Man Who Fought Alone (2001)
November 18th, 2020 at 9:48 pm
The series did pretty much maintain the intensity for the full run though the problems mentioned here plagued it to the end.
Atmosphere and not plot were Donaldson’s strong points, but he wrote well, and his visual style was stong.
November 18th, 2020 at 10:30 pm
On the other hand, here’s an excerpt from Barry Gardner’s review of the second book:
“These are terribly damaged people. All of them. There are no characters in the book, even those sketched most lightly, for whom it was possible for me to feel any empathy, or any emotion other than a horrified or distasteful pity. The despair is unremitting. By the end my only feelings were relief and a determination not to subject myself to more such.”
Here’s the link to his full review:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=33637
November 21st, 2020 at 11:07 pm
I might point out the hero of his Thomas Covenant series was a leper, so Donaldson’s dark view was at least consistent. The despair was perhaps easier to take in a fantasy setting.
The leper part came naturally, his father was in charge of the last leper hospital in the continental US in Louisiana.