Book Review: Poet in the Gutter

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

[4 stars]

Poet in the Gutter Amazon US HC Amazon UK PB Amazon Canada HC
John Baker
Class/Genre: Mystery
Series: Sam Turner # 1

Sam Turner has an unhappy history. Several years before the book begins his wife and infant daughter were killed by a hit and run driver. A second impulsive marriage ended swiftly and unhappily. He has drifted through life in the intervening years, giving in to drunken binges, and living on the very edge of respectability. As the book opens, Sam has stopped drinking and on successive evenings attends various support groups, singles activities, and AA meetings in York. Impulsively one evening when introducting himself, he announces that he is a private investigator.

Sam is surprised and disconcerted when a fellow group member approaches him to request Sam's services. But he decides to accept the assignment, a rather low key job of following the man's wife to determine her destination when she leaves home each evening. Things get more intense quickly when the man who hired Sam is found stabbed to death, with an ominous note pinned to his body.

Sam enlists a pool playing friend to work with him, befriends a young homeless teenager to join the staff, and engages a retired English teacher to run the office, build up a business presence with insurance companies and attorneys. In the meantime, Sam will uncover the reason behind his client's death.

Eventually Sam realizes he is on the trail of a serial killer, and in a measure of danger personally. The local police are not always pleased to have Sam on the trail.

Baker has a very pleasant writing style, with many flashes of humor. We learn about Sam and his young assistant Geordie in a sort of stream of consciousness pattern, moving back and forth between the two, and forward and back in time.

This is the first entry in a very entertaining series!

Woodstock - RAM

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