Small Bytes by Robert Germaux: Back to the Beginning of JB Barnes

Small Bytes by Robert Germaux Series: Jeremy Barnes, #3 (Chronologically #1) Kindle Edition, 286 pg. 2019 Read: July 5, 2021

Tony’s Bar and Grill was your typical local hangout. Located in a working-class neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else and their business, it had gone through several changes of ownership over the years, but the one constant had always been that strangers weren’t particularly welcome, and anyone who lived more than ten blocks away was a stranger.

I lived on the other side of town.

When I walked into Tony’s on a warm spring night, the place didn’t suddenly become silent, the way things happen in the movies, but there was a noticeable drop in the level of conversation.

What’s Small Bytes About?

JB’s oldest friend asks him to give one of her friends a call—her husband had recently been murdered, and she’s dissatisfied with what the police are telling her. Could JB look into things for her?

Terry Pendleton is shot outside his home on his way to work. The police (primarily a lazy and racist lead detective) have determined that it was a mugging gone wrong—despite no evidence of theft, or anything else, really. The widow and many of his colleagues deem that out of character—if a mugger had approached Pendleton demanding money, he’d have been given it all without a struggle.

Barnes isn’t convinced by Rachel Pendelton or the others at the firm, but he thinks there might be something to it. Once he meets the lead detective, JB wants to prove him wrong just out of distaste for the man. But before he really gets anywhere at all in the investigation, a man with ties to organized crime warns JB from continuing to look into things.

JB has no idea what he might be getting into, but at this point, he sure knows it’s something…

Not Technically a Prequel

In the Author’s Note before Chapter 1, Germaux says this was the first he wrote in the series, but he published books #4 and #5 in the series first. So this serves as a prequel, if you go in publication order—not something I’m used to seeing in a P.I. series, but it works.

I think I would have guessed that this was the first JB Barnes that he wrote even if he hadn’t said it. There’s something—maybe just confidence, maybe just the experience of having written other complete novels, probably something else—that’s missing from this that was present in Hard Court or In the Eye.

I’m Not Sure About that Title

There are only so many things that “Bytes” can apply to. As this is a Detective Novel, you know some sort of cybercrime is involved—at the very least some sort of electronic data is going to be very important to the P.I. wrapping things up.

When there is zero discussion of anything along those lines (at least in reference to JB’s case), it’s hard to believe that he’s uncovering anything that matters up until a related concept shows up.

Thankfully, the book was interesting, the characters were engaging and the subplots were compelling, and JB’s narrative voice keeps you turning pages. So even while wondering when we were going to get anything computer-related, I was enjoying things. Still, that title doesn’t do the text any favors.

So, what did I think about Small Bytes?

Along the way, I dropped the envelope in a mailbox and thought about what Uncle Leo had told me the day I’d first expressed an interest in joining him in the business. The most important thing, he’d said, was learning to balance the highs and the lows, “‘cause you’re gonna have both, the good and the bad. Ya gotta learn to balance them, son, or the demons’ll be dancin’ in your head way too many nights.”

I’m still learning.

With both of Germaux’s series—the Jeremy Barnes and Daniel Hays books—I’ve said that each book feels like you’re returning to a well-established series that you’ve been reading for a while. And, given the order he wrote these books in, that makes sense. But even Small Bytes feels like it’s not the beginning, but something mid-series. Sure, this is a turning point in the series, but there’s no sense of Germaux introducing people and relationships, just picking up where he left off. I really appreciate that.

Small Bytes is a fun read, and I’m glad I read it, but I’m glad it’s not the first book I read by Germaux or about JB. But even here at the beginning, I want to stress, there are a few passages that just sing. Germaux has the knack for spinning a solid PI tale and captures the feel, voice, and style of the best of the genre.

Which is why I’ll be back for the others in the series soon—and why I’ll jump on anything else Germaux has in store for JB, and why I’ll suggest you give him a try, too.