Sat 18 Dec 2010
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: JONATHAN VALIN – The Music Lovers.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
JONATHAN VALIN – The Music Lovers. Harry Stoner #10. Delacorte, hardcover, March 1993. Reprint paperback: Dell, April, 1994.
Harry Stoner is going through a bad patch. He’s middle-aged, his lady is out of town, business is slow, and he’s damned near broke. Then a little man about his age comes in and wants him to recover some stolen records; vinyl, collector-type, that is.
And he knows who took them, he says – another collector. Harry, needing money, accepts. Needless to say, it gets a lot more complex than it first seemed, and violent – though far from as violent as a typical Harry Stoner tale.
I really hate to say this, but Music Lovers wasn’t very good at all. Certainly it isn’t the type of book one expects of Valin. He is still a competent prose-smith, and that’s about the best I can find to say.
Though I did enjoy the bits about record collecting, I never believed the story, and I couldn’t believe in the characters (who lacked any edge, and would have been much more at home in another kind, any other kind, of book) or in their relationships.
The interplay between a bigot and a black man was in particular excruciatingly false and unbelievable. In this book Stoner was nothing more than a cookie-cutter PI who did stupid and unrealistic things. including withholding the whereabouts of a wanted murderer from the police for the flimsiest of reasons.
I hope Valin just had one of those days, and hasn’t burned completely out. I’ve heard people who’ve never tried him before say that they enjoyed this; maybe so, but if you’re a Stoner fan already, don’t bother – you’ll be disappointed.
Previously on this blog:
Final Notice (reviewed by Steve Lewis). A complete listing of the Harry Stoner series follows the review. There was only one more to come after The Music Lovers.
December 18th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
Steve, the link at the bottom of the review does not lead to Valin’s FINAL NOTICE review. I bet this is a test to see if anyone is reading?
December 18th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
No, but I guess it worked out that way. Gremlins and a sluggish computer have plagued me all evening.
Time to go to bed and do a purge of the hard drive tomorrow. I’ll apply the enema tonight, right after a quick fix of the messed up link. (Done!)
December 19th, 2010 at 9:03 am
I gave up on Valin long before this one, though I did like the first few. For a PI who is still getting it done I recommend Loren Estleman’s 600 page Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection.
December 19th, 2010 at 11:02 am
THE MUSIC LOVERS is actually the second-to-last last Valin I enjoyed, though it it’s not in a class with three of the five that immediately preceded it–nor even the one that immediately followed it, MISSING (1996).
NATURAL CAUSES (1983), FIRE LAKE (1987), and EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES (1989), are in my opinion classics of the P.I genre.
LIFE’S WORK (1986) is pretty good too.
December 19th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
[…] that was built wholly in the last 90 or so pages. It turned an average book into one I disliked. First Valin, now Lyons. [Darn.] – Reprinted from Ah, Sweet Mysteries #10, November […]
December 22nd, 2010 at 11:44 am
This was the novel that ended my flirtation with the Harry Stoner series. I bought it in hardcover on publication and and I still regret that purchase. Valin was knowledgeable about record collecting, a subject of considerable interest to me, but the mystery element was a bummer. In recent years he’s been reviewing for “The Absolute Sound” for which he is currently the Executive Editor.