Circling the Runway

Jake Diamond, J.L. Abramo's gumshoe in Circling the Runway, is an affectionate throwback to private eyes of the golden age. He's a loner, has a particular drink (George Dickel whiskey), has a sassy secretary, and a difficult relationship with the San Francisco police department. He enjoys classic novels--throughout this one he is reading Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in paperback). He also has a gift for similes and metaphors, though not close to anything of Philip Marlowe's: "His head felt the size of the Trans America Pyramid, point and all." "I walked into the office at ten minutes before nine. I looked like a million bucks. Green and wrinkled." "I decided I had as much chance of getting into Johnson’s good graces as Pete Rose had of getting into the Hall of Fame." And, "Johnson’s patience was being tested, and the sergeant’s patience was not an A student."

Johnson is Sergeant Roxton Johnson, San Francisco detective, investigating the murder of the district attorney. A flurry of bodies follows, involving some of the city's more colorful gangsters. A compendium of Italian names runs throughout, such as Carmine Cicero, Johnny Voglio, and a guy named Vincent Stradivarius, so of course he's known as Vinnie Strings.

Diamond is drawn into the mix to prove that a gangster's cousin isn't the one who killed a mutilated body found in the back of a stolen car. Through much of the book he kind of plays second-fiddle to Johnson and his boss, the beautiful Linda Lopez, who Johnson caught stealing a piece of evidence from the crime scene.

Abramo keeps a lot of balls in the air, maybe too many. A subplot a creep stalking Diamond's secretary, Darlene Roman, is completely superfluous. The ending features one of the things I hate most in crime novels: the villain explaining everything he did, which I think is lazy writing. Also, the book has an odd structure where Diamond narrates his chapters, but the ones without him are in the third person. I preferred being in the company of Diamond, because even if he's not really hard-boiled, at least he's soft-boiled.