Thu 8 Jun 2023
An Archived PI Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: NEIL ALBERT – Appointment in May.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
NEIL ALBERT – Appointment in May. Dave Garrett #5, hardcover, Walker, 1996. No paperback edition.
Well, I see Albert has moved back down Publisher’s Row to his point of origin (see list below), another PI writer having a rough time of it. In all honesty, I wasn’t impressed that much with his first two, and quit the third without finishing it, and didn’t try the fourth. Pickings are slim right now, though, so once more into the breach. Or maybe breech.
Dave Garrett is hired to follow a woman who has left her husband, to find out why. He does, and does, but the husband wants him to keep shadowing her for reasons that are unclear. The money’s solid though, so he does again. But then someone dies, and he wishes he hadn’t.
The problem with Albert’s books is that I haven’t believed any of them. Many times in each I’ve found myself stopping to think, “Would this person really do this?” or “Could it really happen this way?”
Some of ’em are big things and some of ’em are small, and sometimes the answer’s “maybe” and sometimes it’s “hell, no.” The point is, there are always lots of them, and they occur time after time, book after book. Albert and I just seem to have very different ideas about how people are and how they act, and about what’s credible and what’s not. I won’t read another of these.
The Dave Garrett series—
The January Corpse. Walker 1991.
The February Trouble. Walker 1992.
Burning March. Dutton 1994.
Cruel April. Dutton 1995.
Appointment in May. Walker 1996.
Tangled June. Walker 1997.
June 8th, 2023 at 10:26 pm
I read the first two, and (as I remember) I enjoyed them, but at the time there were a lot of PI series to keep on top of, and I just wasn’t able to.
Without paperback reprints for either of them, I did not even know that numbers 5 and 6 existed, until just now.
June 9th, 2023 at 5:46 pm
PS. What an ugly, half-assed cover. Walker should have been ashamed of themselves.
June 9th, 2023 at 9:13 pm
There was a period there where there were private eye series everywhere, but damn few I felt like reading, mostly for the reasons listed here, a lack of conviction that seemed to have infected too many in the genre.
June 9th, 2023 at 10:26 pm
I can’t remember a book that Barry was as emphatic about disliking as he was with this one.