And just who is Leo Waterman
A softhearted sleuth with a rebellious streak left over from the 's, Leo Waterman seems to get entangled in, every oddball situation from Seattle to Puget Sound.
So when he's hired to locate Caroline Nobel, an errant mob heiress with an environmentalist's heart, Leo goes with the flow leaving behind the familiar sights of Pioneer Square to follow the landscapeloving activist into the rainsoaked Washington woods.
But Caroline's conscientious cohorts are dragging her deeper into the murky waters of environmental sabotage, And her hotheaded enthusiasm can't be cooled, even after two people are brutally murdered, Caroline's onto something extremely toxic, And unless Waterman can clear the air, her deadly dedication could poison him as well, Leo Waterman is an exceptionally entertaining character with a laugh out loud wit but I found the environmental activism/American Indian plot lines a little too preachy.
I'm not giving up on Leo and his unusually charismatic associates though and will keep hope alive for subsequent books in the series.
Like the beginning of this series, Already downloaded book! Different
Enjoyed the action and use of "street people" as integral characters in the story.
I read this book before but forgot, It was well worth a second read, “And So, Hilarity Ensues!”
Leo Waterman and his group of drunken posse are
requested by a “friend” to help find a missing woman.
There is a lot of suspicious activity going on at the local bar, located near a reservation.
Leos investigation is not going as well as he expected, In fact, he may be in big trouble,
Time to get his posse together, Their help is going to be needed,
These oldtimers do their best,
A mysterythriller, and hilarious to boot, Funny, funny, improbable and lovable characters, Set in Seattle where the lone P, I. solves cases with the help of his version of the Baker Street regulars, a bunch of winos from downtown's Pioneer Square.
Well written, political humor and atypical shamus investigations form the basis of these novels, Goodread reviews of this book seem less excited than Amazon reviews, which tried to tell me the book was hilarious.
It was not. It was a lighter read than the average crime thriller, certainly, but hardly "hilarious, " Overall, it was okay. I haven't read a PI mystery newer than, so I was curious to see what their more modern brothers are like.
Nothing special, if this book is an example,
There was one point in the book, however, where there was a moment of lucid humanity that touched me.
A Native American woman was recounting the tragic history of her tribe, of which Leo Waterman, our main character, knew little.
He confessed so, "But I know about voids," he told her,
Her anger boiled to the surface, dragging mine with it,
“What do you know about voids" she demanded,
"I know that my friend Buddy Knox a homeless man was every bit as invisible to the society that surrounded him as your people are.
I know that Buddy had some kind of massive hole inside of him that he tried to drink full.
Maybe the void wasn't forced on him, Maybe in some way it was, I don't know. It was there. The void is there for a lot of us, It's not an Indian thing or a white thing, It's a people thing. I know you can live smack in the middle of white culture and not be a part of it.
All you've got to do is get outside the limits, The minute you become something they don't want to look at, they stop looking at you, It's that simple. You join the void. That much I'm sure of, " I decided to shut up before I got myself in trouble,
Something there touched me, It reminded me of a time when I more easily became angry, when I more easily ranted, when the trials of the invisible people hurt me more deeply.
At that point, I had to put down the book, and simply sat quietly for a long while.
Overall, the book wasn't that great, But it reminded me of something important, which many more enjoyable reads fail to do, I can't say I would recommend the book to anyone, but if I myself should ever stumble across some of his other books, I'd probably pick it up and give it try.
Today's Hard Boiled Detective
For Mature Readers
Violence some pretty explicit
Harsh language
Sexual references
Humor
Leo Waterman, detective, is hired by a sketchy client to find a young woman who is part of an extreme environmentalist group.
With the help of Leo's brand of Baker Street Irregulars, in other words our society's invisible street people, he uncovers almost unbelievable corruption.
Great character development.
Amusing toughtalking detective dialog,
There are apparently other novels in the series, but you don't need to read them to enjoy this one.
Recommended but beware, This is no sweet little Miss Marple cozy, I read this book back when it was new in, long before there was a Goodreads and almost before there was an internet.
I just reread it, having also read some of the more recent ones in the series, and I think in some ways it's improved over time.
I remembered it as being disjointed and a little out of control, but still very entertaining for a first book.
Now I'd say the author had a lot of different ideas he was trying to squeeze in, and he pretty much succeeded.
He was ahead of his time in dealing with American Indian issues, but his detective has a group of Baker Street Irregulars to help himhomeless men and women, middleclass folks who got screwed by the system and fell into drunken, drugaddled poverty.
They are endearing and unreliable, but lifesavers in the end, That whole trope doesn't wear very well, I had read one of the newer Leo Waterman's before I read the first one, I really enjoyed the other one more, I feel like the author got better the more he wrote, I still enjoyed this one, It's funny to see that some things haven't changed that much, The story was good. I believe this was written in the's, I've had to stop reading some mystery series written in the's b/c it seemed really outdated.
This book did not feel that way, Obviously some things were b/c it has been over two decades but, it was definitely manageable, I enjoy the characters and after reading further in the series it is nice to see there has been some character development which I always appreciate.
I will definitely continue the series, This is the beginning of a wonderful ride! In his creation Leo Waterman, G, M. Ford gives the world a splendid, intense, but somewhat flawed man, In fact, Leo is so flawed as noted by his father that his father's will has stipulated that he cannot inherit the fortune his father acquired through various legal, but mostly illegal, means, until he is quite past new adulthood.
Thus his unconventional means of making of living as a hired detective,
He does not go about this alone, but rather has a group of misfits, street rats, who assist him by working in the background where only the invisible can be.
Working in this environment, certain well insufficiencies must be accepted, Thus the title Who the Hell is Wanda Fuca! Juan de Fuca, as in the Straits of,
In what would become a hallmark of the Leo Waterman stories, suspense builds, bodies drops, and eventually, after Leo and his cronies are in dire trouble, even nearly murdered, he discovers the source of the troubles, the miscreants are either destroyed or hauled off to jail, and something like peace reigns.
. . although, only until the next book!,