Helpful Score: 3
I will give this book ½-star. Only so high because I didn't find any obvious typos.
Whoever said "Life is too short to read bad books." must have had this dog in mind.
In my almost 50 years on this planet, I can count on ONE hand the number of books that I've not finished. This one will have its VERY OWN FINGER!!
I can almost always find SOMETHING in a story worth sticking it out for. Maybe one character is sympathetic and likable, or I actually get sucked into some foreshadowed event ...
This book had none of that. The characters were obnoxious, shallow, indecisive, foul-mouthed and altogether unlikable. If I never hear of them again, I'm not missing anything. There's not a single one - from the "detective" to his secretary, from his two clients to the satellite parts - that acts in a way consistent with any normal human being on the planet. The main character couldn't detect his way to the checkout lane in a grocery store, and where this *might* be charming in other stories, in this one he comes across as a misogynistic cretin.
Pete Ingalls, P.I. should really be Pete Ingalls, P.U. (holding nose here). In the opening scene, he wakes up in a hospital and doesn't know how he got there. Some hints are offered, and I almost wanted to read to the end to figure out what went wrong. But I soon realized that it didn't matter. He woke up thinking he was a P.I. from the 40's. Starting wearing zoot suits and calling every female in the book "Doll" or "Angel" or "Sugar". Now, don't get me wrong ... a little bit of Chandleresque patter can be entertaining. But since Pete is narrating the story, and he ONLY speaks/thinks in patter, it wears thin real fast - especially because he knows the patter words, but not how to use them. Patter is a device best left to dialog, not narration.
The foul language is another problem - unless you LIKE to see the f-word coming from EVERY character in EVERY scene. (I don't.)
As for the story itself, I'm not sure there is any ... Pete bumbles around town annoying people and getting beat up. He is hired to find a missing person, and after finding them, he decides that his "duty to his client" includes sticking his nose into the private lives of all involved, which makes no sense. Who knows? Maybe it all comes together in the denouement. I'll certainly never find out. I think I'd rather be left with my illusions ....
Do yourself a favor - pretend you never heard of this book ....
Whoever said "Life is too short to read bad books." must have had this dog in mind.
In my almost 50 years on this planet, I can count on ONE hand the number of books that I've not finished. This one will have its VERY OWN FINGER!!
I can almost always find SOMETHING in a story worth sticking it out for. Maybe one character is sympathetic and likable, or I actually get sucked into some foreshadowed event ...
This book had none of that. The characters were obnoxious, shallow, indecisive, foul-mouthed and altogether unlikable. If I never hear of them again, I'm not missing anything. There's not a single one - from the "detective" to his secretary, from his two clients to the satellite parts - that acts in a way consistent with any normal human being on the planet. The main character couldn't detect his way to the checkout lane in a grocery store, and where this *might* be charming in other stories, in this one he comes across as a misogynistic cretin.
Pete Ingalls, P.I. should really be Pete Ingalls, P.U. (holding nose here). In the opening scene, he wakes up in a hospital and doesn't know how he got there. Some hints are offered, and I almost wanted to read to the end to figure out what went wrong. But I soon realized that it didn't matter. He woke up thinking he was a P.I. from the 40's. Starting wearing zoot suits and calling every female in the book "Doll" or "Angel" or "Sugar". Now, don't get me wrong ... a little bit of Chandleresque patter can be entertaining. But since Pete is narrating the story, and he ONLY speaks/thinks in patter, it wears thin real fast - especially because he knows the patter words, but not how to use them. Patter is a device best left to dialog, not narration.
The foul language is another problem - unless you LIKE to see the f-word coming from EVERY character in EVERY scene. (I don't.)
As for the story itself, I'm not sure there is any ... Pete bumbles around town annoying people and getting beat up. He is hired to find a missing person, and after finding them, he decides that his "duty to his client" includes sticking his nose into the private lives of all involved, which makes no sense. Who knows? Maybe it all comes together in the denouement. I'll certainly never find out. I think I'd rather be left with my illusions ....
Do yourself a favor - pretend you never heard of this book ....
Helpful Score: 2
Funny in a Woody Allen sort of way. The first in a series.
Helpful Score: 1
Great read. Took a bit to get into the gumshoe style humor but once there...sooo funny.
A bookstore employee has an accident and wakes up in the hospital thinking he's a 1940-ish private eye. He and his assistant tackle two different cases and, although his stereotypical PI patter tends to get old after a while, it's a cute change from the hard-boiled detective novel.
