What do You think about Death's Little Helpers (2005)?
I stuggled with the ratingg and I imagine that many readers would give this book 4 instead of three stars. It is a literary caper. All you ever wanted to know about the shenanigans now being displayed on the front pages of the Wall Street debacle are contained in the book. While this is a strength it is also its weakness. I like a little more action and less minuate in my mysteries. While describing some arcane finacial transaction, ( the writer spent years as a stockbroker berfore becoming a novelist), I was wishing for a gunshot or villian to appear. But the train picks up speed after a slow start and the ending chapters are terrific.
—William
Not as good as Black Maps, which is one of my all-time favorites, but still an okay read.It was only after I'd begun reading it that I saw the blurb from Ken Bruen on the back, which should have given me a clue as to the writing style in this one. If Ken Bruen likes it, with his long, tedious navel-gazing protagonists, the same might have slipped in here.The narrator, John March, gets a little more overly descriptive in this book, and seems... duller, somehow, in this book than the first one. Duller as if his colors were different, not in a boring sort of way.Thankfully you can skim most of the wardrobe inventory, though the mystery is a pretty lukewarm one that you may have guessed whodunit pretty early on.Death's Little Helpers isn't enough to have soured me on Peter Spiegelman, but it's definitely not my favorite book of his. We'll see how the next in the series goes.
—Matthew
Pretty good. The author has a good, witty first person narration that keeps the story interesting through the main character's descriptions, especially of people with whom he interacts. The plot and the climax of the story are intersting and provide a somewhat original ending for a typical story line. The books does suffer at times from feeling overly long. It seems like a good story could have been almost great, if the editor had cut more and allowed the story to move more quickly and at a more even pace. Some parts of the novel felt slow and difficult to get through while the ending bordered on feeling overly rushed as if the author was attempting to wrap up the story by a deadline. The other problem with the novel is that it has an inconsistent tone. The main character has a witty, cyncical take on things around him, but there are parts where the author wanted the story to be darker ie hints of the main character's past, problems with his family and in his other relationships. These moments seems rather jarring, sudden and at times overly forced..not enough build up, especially compared to the character's lighter description/dialogue. Mike Harvey's Michael Kelley has a similar funny/cynical while wandering through dangerous environs, but I think it works better for Harvey as the dark side (ie corruption, Kelley's previous fall from grace) is always there in the background and so it does not take as much for the author to touch on it to bring in darker elements at key moments. Here it was much more forced as the author attempts to unearth something right when he wants to set the right tone.
—Zach
