As part of New Pulp Press’ opening slate of titles, THE BUTCHER’S GRANDDAUGHTER seems to have its act down in presenting a new voice in crime fiction. With a little more editing, Michael Lion’s debut novel could have been even better than it already is.
The protagonist is Bird, a man who lives in L.A. simply because he understands it. Bird is hired by a woman named Li Nguyen to look after her sister Song, who finds trouble as fast as the wind blows. Not only is Song sleeping with a car thief, but she starts cheating on him. As fast as Bird can clean up her mess, another one comes right along: Song winding up dead.
Adding to this story is that Bird is also hired by a friend to look into the activities of a girl named Denise, who has a job she wants no one to know about: working on a yacht where older gentlemen can partake in certain activities involving girls who are underage. Faster than you can say “Mike Shayne,” these two cases are intertwined like a pretzel.
From here, the story moves into a maze-like structure, where a bit of trimming could have made it a little easier to follow. One major sticking point for me is that a bulk of the plot happens “offscreen,” in that Bird hears about major plot points from other people. If you are going to try to ape a Mike Shayne story device, then have Bird be front and center for these situations. Another problem was that it seems Bird knows what is going on, but leaves readers lost. This is problematic because the story is so dense, I had to reread certain sections to make sure I did not miss something important.
Still, GRANDDAUGHTER moves along at a nice pace. Lion knows the genre well enough to really put Bird through the wringer. Maybe with his follow-up, he’ll have Bird more involved and less reliant on secondhand or thirdhand information. This is a a fine debut from a new publisher — with just some tweaking here and there, it could have been truly amazing. As is, it will please crime fiction fans who are tired of the predictable and generic. —Bruce Grossman
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