Mon 11 Apr 2022
An Archived PI Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: ROBERT O. GREER – The Devil’s Hatband.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
ROBERT O. GREER – The Devil’s Hatband. CJ Floyd #1. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1996; paperback, 1997.
This is a first novel by an author described as “doctor, scientist, cattle rancher, and editor.” I make the maybe unwarranted assumption that he’s black.
His protagonist, CJ Floyd, is, anyway. CJ is in his forties, a Viet Nam vet who is now a bail bondsman and part-time bounty hunter in Denver. Two black corporate types want him to find the daughter of a black judge who happens to be on the board of a big-time biotech corporation — the one they work for — and in the process retrieve some unspecified but important papers she stole.
He finds her easily enough, but she’s already a corpse. His search for the missing papers lands him in the middle of an environmentalist terrorist plot aimed at the cattle industry, and in danger from unexpected sources.
This wasn’t a bad first novel, though it wasn’t exceptionally good, either. Greer tells his story third-person primarily from Floyd’s standpoint, and does an adequate job of moving it along. I thought the Colorado ambiance was well done, too. The plot seemed to me to have a thread or two too many to it, and they didn’t quite come together believably at the end.
Floyd had his moments, but never did come fully to life for me. Greer put a fair amount of black rhetoris in the narrative, but it had a distinctly upper-middle-class ring to it; he doesn’t doesn’t know how to talk the talk. BarbaraNeely probably wouldn’t give him the time of day.
Blurb to the contrary, I don’t think he’s quite ready to “take his place beside Walter Mosley” — too many “buts.” Maybe later.
The CJ Floyd series
1. The Devil’s Hatband (1996)
2. The Devil’s Red Nickel (1997)
3. The Devil’s Backbone (1998)
4. Resurrecting Langston Blue (2005)
5. The Fourth Perspective (2006)
6. The Mongoose Deception (2007)
7. Blackbird, Farewell (2008)
8. First of State (2010)
April 11th, 2022 at 8:07 pm
He obviously had some success so I may have to try one out, but it sounds a bit not one thing or the other from the review.
April 11th, 2022 at 8:32 pm
Wanted to like the first one–this one–more than I did.
Never finished the second one. After two tries I tossed it.
April 11th, 2022 at 9:06 pm
I bought the fist three in paperback, but I don’t believe I tried any of them. I had no idea that there were more than the first three, but I see there was a gap between those three and the remaining five. I suspect they may have been self-published, but I apologize in advance if I’m wrong about that.
From the Fantastic Fiction page for Dr. Greer:
“Robert Greer, author of the CJ Floyd mystery series, lives in Denver, where he is a practicing surgical pathologist, research scientist, and Professor of Pathology and Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He also edits the High Plains Literary Review, reviews books for National Public Radio, and raises Black Baldy cattle on his ranch near Steamboat Springs, Colorado.”
April 12th, 2022 at 12:29 pm
The last several books were published by Frog Ltd, in Berkley CA, so maybe a vanity publisher?
Never heard of them before or since.
April 12th, 2022 at 7:04 pm
Thank you everyone. That pretty much answers any questions I had.