Fri 1 Dec 2023
An Archived Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: WILLIAM L. DeANDREA – Killed in the Fog.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
WILLIAM L. DeANDREA – Killed in the Fog. Matt Cobb #8. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1996. No paperback edition.
DeAndrea is really cranking them out lately. He’s got three series going {Cobb, Niccolo Beneditti, and the new one set in the Wild West with Quinn Booker & Lobo Blacke), plus odds and ends like the Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. I don’t think any of his fiction will make anyone’s “100 Best” list, but he’s been consistently smooth and entertaining, imho.
Matt Cobb, network v-p in charge of special projects, is on a sabbatical in London with his true love, who also happens to be the network’s biggest stockholder. He stops by the headquarters of one of the network’s subsidiaries just to be visiting, agrees to do the manager a favor, and finds himself involved in a murder and slapped in jail. Different country, business as usual,
This, like the last Cobb I read, is a lesser effort by De.Andrea. Cobb is still a likable lead, and DeAndrea’s prose still reads effortlessly, but the story simply didn’t engage me. I’m not sure why, and that makes me think that the problem might be with me rather than with the author.
Whoever’s problem it was, though, I didn’t get a hell of a lot out of this one.
December 2nd, 2023 at 12:00 am
My review of MURDER IN PARADISE, #5 in the series, is here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=46624
And a 1001 MIDNIGHTS review of KILLED ON THE ICE, #4, by Julie Smith, is here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=46624
KILLED IN THE FOG was the final book in the series, and apparently, according to Barry, not one of the better ones.
(Both links have a complete list of all eight books.)
December 2nd, 2023 at 7:54 am
DeAndrea was always an entertaining writer who, despite winning three Edgar awards, was never fully recognized for his talents. His first Lobo Blacke/ Quinn Booker novel, WRITTEN IN FIRE (1995), was one of the best (of not the best) books I read that year.
December 2nd, 2023 at 9:53 am
Is “the fog” a traditional Dickensian/Holmesian pea-souper? There hasn’t been one in London for more than sixty years, though they’re still a trope even in contemporary-set books. If I come across one I discard the book at once, unless it’s meant to be unrealistic.
December 2nd, 2023 at 9:01 pm
Point taken. The “Great Fog of London” was in 1952, and that’s already over 70 years ago.
December 3rd, 2023 at 1:56 am
In fairness even British made TV series in the Sixties and Seventies sometimes overdid the fog. I only lived there two years and the worst was no worse than I experienced other places and not half as bad as Houston.
DeAndrea was a good writer, but perhaps it came too easily. Some of his books dazzled and others, like this one, felt a little offhand.
December 3rd, 2023 at 2:01 am
In fairness even British made TV series in the Sixties and Seventies sometimes overdid the fog. I only lived there two years and the worst was no worse than I experienced other places and not half as bad as Houston. The industrial smog that made the fog in 1952 so bad was pretty much gone before the decade ended.
DeAndrea was a good writer, but perhaps it came too easily. Some of his books dazzled and others, like this one, felt a little offhand.