Tag: Jake Abraham

Bad Memory by Jim Cliff: A Very Cold (and Closed) Case Gets a Second Look

Bad MemoryBad Memory

by Jim Cliff

DETAILS:
Series: Jake Abraham, #2
Publisher: Antbear Books
Publication Date: May 2, 2017
Format: eBook
Length: 104 pg.
Read Date: February 1, 2023

“I need you to find out what happened to her. I need to know who killed her.”

“The paper says suicide,” I helpfully pointed out. Case closed. That was easy.

“They’re wrong.”

“You seem pretty sure about that.”

“I was there when she died.”

What’s Bad Memory About?

Jake Abraham’s a P.I. who probably should’ve gone into another line of work, all things considered. But he didn’t, and it turns out that he has a knack for this kind of thing (see The Shoulders of Giants).

Jake’s approached by a client* who wants to him to look into a twenty-three old suicide. She was nearby, she says, when the woman died, and what she remembers hearing makes her certain it wasn’t a suicide. She was pressured into staying silent back then, but the reasons for that have disappeared and now she wants to unburden her conscience.

* I’m pretty sure she was a character in the earlier novel, but after 6+ years, I don’t remember—and I’m too lazy to check

Jake starts looking into this—talking to his detective friend, coworkers of the deceased, and the man who pressured his client into staying quiet. What he discovers doesn’t add up to a tidy suicide like the police had determined—but it doesn’t rule it out either.

Well, except for the people who aren’t doing an incredibly subtle tailing job on him all of the sudden. He’s not doing anything else that should draw anyone’s attention.

Cliff’s Voice

It wasn’t the first time I’d had a gun pointed at me, but it doesn’t get any more fun.

Like with The Shoulders of Giants, Cliff’s voice—the snappy PI patter in both the first-person narration and Jake’s dialogue—wins me over. It’s like Stout enjoying himself, early Crais, or Parker at his lightest. It just sings.

I really don’t need a good story to make me enjoy reading something told with this (or a similar) voice. Thankfully, Cliff delivers a good story, too—making it all the more enjoyable.

So, what did I think about Bad Memory?

There aren’t many perks to being a licensed private investigator. We can’t arrest people, we can’t tap people’s phones, we can’t even go through people’s mail. We’re basically private citizens with tenacious personalities.

This novella is precisely what I needed—I’d just finished two long-ish reads that were pretty heavy and taken a lot out of me emotionally. This was quick, satisfying, and filled with some snappy writing. It was a nice change of pace and tone, giving me the chance to catch my breath before diving into another full novel.

Even if it didn’t serve that purpose for me, I’d have been glad to read this—it scratches that P.I. itch in just the right way.

There was a moment when I thought that the book was trying too hard to convince me that Suspect X was guilty, and so I started to wonder who else it could’ve been. But then I remembered that this was a novella and Cliff didn’t have space to be that clever—so I shifted to trying to figure out why X was guilty. If he’d had another 100+ pages in the book and X was still guilty, I’d likely have complained about it. But given the space restraints, I have no problem with X.

Short, sweet, and to the point. This novella got the job done and makes me wish that Cliff wrote faster.


3 Stars

The Shoulders of Giants by Jim Cliff

The Shoulders of GiantsThe Shoulders of Giants

by Jim Cliff

Kindle, 252 pg.
Jim Cliff, 2013
Read: January 17 – 19, 2015

“I grew up watching The Rockford Files, Magnum P.I., Vega$. Bogart films like The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep, led me to books by Hammett and Chandler. Most of my formative years were spent in front of the TV or with my head in a book. I was realistic about it, though. I didn’t think my life was going to be like some hard-boiled airport detective novel, but I was always good at solving problems, thinking laterally and logically, and it seemed like something I would enjoy.”

This is how Jake Abraham describes his career choice. Jake describes a lot of us there — but where I fantasized about becoming a mystery novelist, Jake wanted to live the novels.

This is where his career starts — a disgraced former police captain hires Jake to find his missing daughter (not surprisingly, Capt. Patterson doesn’t think his former pals in the Chicago Police Department are going to be overly sympathetic). Jake throws himself into this with every bit of gusto he can summon. Which is a lot — thankfully, he’s more than just enthusiasm. Jake’s smart, educated, and (pretty) disciplined — which serves him well.

The case gets pretty serious pretty quickly, and it’s not long before a missing college girl sounds a lot better than what Jake has to deal with. While investigating her disappearance, the rookie P.I. comes across a few other criminal activities — some of which he observes, some of which he helps the police with, and some of which happen to him. These keep the main story from being a simple series of rabbit trails and red herrings and also reveal a good amount about our hero. From a plot-standpoint, this isn’t a great novel, but it’s good enough to stick with.

Jake has a long friendship with a CPD detective who helps him (both purposefully and inadvertently) more than he should, which really helps Jake through some of the understandable stumbles he makes out of the gate. He also makes some really convenient new friends along the way that make it possible for Jake to make progress with some investigations, and even resolve a thing or two. Not the greatest supporting cast — but largely interesting and people I wouldn’t mind spending more time with.

Jake reminds me of Lee Goldberg’s Harvey Mapes (from The Man with the Iron-On Badge/Watch Me Die) — but Jake’s got his act more together, even if he and Harvey are drawing inspiration from the same sources. I like Jake. I actually like him better than I like the book, but as long as you like the protagonist like that, you can keep reading a mediocre book (and this isn’t mediocre, actually — it’s pretty good, just not as good as Cliff will be writing 4 books from now).

Jake has a nice dry wit, like many of the P.I.s he wants to emulate. Lines like

The third number produced nothing. I wasn’t very surprised, sixty percent of Americans have unlisted numbers. There are a lot of paranoid people out there, and it just makes it harder for the rest of us to find out who they are, and where they live.

make sure that this is an enjoyable read.

A fun character off to a promising start. I look forward to reading the next in this series.

—–

3 Stars

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén