Suicide? Or Murder?
It’s not where you start a story, but what you do with that beginning. That’s true in many genres, but I notice it all the time in mysteries since that’s what I’m most familiar with. That was true with Bring the Night, the third Nate Ross novel from J. R. Sanders. While the set up may be familiar, where it ends is fun.
The book takes us to 1939 Los Angeles where Nate Ross works as a PI. In the middle of a rash of suicides that summer, a brother and sister walk into Nate’s office wanting to hire him to find the truth about their father’s death. The cops quickly ruled it another suicide, but they insist that it was murder. It isn’t long before Nate is finding more questions than answers and receiving threats. Can he figure out what is going on?
Obviously, it was murder. I mean, if it were suicide, we’d have the most boring short story ever, and this is a novel. But the book also doesn’t take that much time before Nate is convinced that it was murder and then has to figure out who and why. I did catch on to a few things early on, but I didn’t have the entire thing figured out until the end. Having said that, I feel like the book could have explained the why a bit more. Thinking about it after I finished the book, I was able to come up with the reasons why things unfolded as they did, but a confirmation would have been nice. Or maybe I’m just overly picky wanting to have everything spelled out for me.
This is a PI novel in the classic sense. That means that Nate is the main returning character. Yes, there are a few others we’ve seen before, but they are mostly background players. Any of the characters who play a major part in the story are new here. They are all interesting characters, and I enjoyed getting to know them.
Since this is a PI novel, it does have a bit more language and violence than in the books I usually read. This is kept to a minimum, however, and I appreciated that. A few of the characters do speak quite freely in the slang of the day. While I appreciate the attention to detail, a little less of it would have been appreciated. On the other hand, it does give the feeling of a classic PI novel set during that period.
As always, I enjoyed reading about LA. Granted, this is set long before I was born, but it’s still fun to see locations I am familiar with pop up in a story.
If you enjoy PI novels, you’ll be glad you checked out the Nate Ross series. Bring the Night will keep fans of the genre turning pages.
This one looks interesting to me. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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