|
New York City, the 1920s: He's a thug for hire, a giant of a man whose
face has been blown away in World War 1 forcing him to wear a mask, and
that makes him look even more menacing. She's a high society party girl,
fabulous-looking but heavy boozing, and often trouble. And one such night
when she has had enough, he's to drive her home, but she gives him the
slip. A few days later she winds up dead, the death ruled a suicide, but
he knows better - he doesn't know how, he just does, also fueled by the
cock-and-bull story her fame-hungry parents tell about her being a virtual
saint. And then she appears to him, in the flesh, inexplicably. He can
touch her, feel her, she can eat and drink, her body's warm - but nobody
but him can see her. She urges him to find out what has happened to her,
and he quickly develops feelings for the girl, and thinks to find her
murderer might be a way to atone for his many sins, including murder. Now
she doesn't help in his investigations in a direct way, but drops clues as
to who to interview, where to find her diary and the like - and what he
finds out about her is rather shocking, that her father, a failed
businessman, had pretty much sold her to a prominent Boston politician at
age 11, who had groomed her for years to ultimately ... well, I guess you
can finish that phrase yourself. What resulted from that was a net of
blackmail and intrigue, and a young girl's life and mind spun completely
out of control. And as a result, it seems many people could have wished
her dead - but who did actually do the deed? Based loosely on
the real life mystery of Starr Faithfull, a woman whose untimely,
unnatural death in 1931 was shrouded in mystery - read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Starr_Faithfull
-, this novel doesn't follow the events too closely, going even so far as
setting the thing a few years earlier, but does try to emulate the
hard-boiled style of the pulps of the day, yet not so much by just aping
the stories from back when but using them as a template for an actually
very intimate story that adds a supernatural element to the goings-on in a
way that feels perfectly natural and that makes the novel veer off into a
direction all of its own, making this one a rather fascinating read for
sure. If this has gotten you at all interested, The Big
Farewell can be obtained, as e-book or paperback, from the following:
UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B091XPF2VQ USA:
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B091XPF2VQ Germany:
https://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/B091XPF2VQ
...
and from pretty much all Amazons worldwide J
|