Book Review: Rat City

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Rat City     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Curt Colbert
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Series: Jake Rossiter and Miss Jenkins # 1
...

Late 1940's Seattle. Lots of rain, of course. Jake Rossiter, a former Marine now works as a private investigator. His girl Friday, Miss Jenkins, aspires to be a PI as well - and studies through a correspondence course she found on a matchbook cover. As the book opens, she is the stereotypical secretary, filing, answering phones, looking pretty. As the story develops we join Jake in learning many more delightful things about Miss Jenkins!

Cliches fly thick and fast in this entertaining homage to the early days of crime fiction. Colbert skillfully keeps the tone of the book readable and fun.

Events begin with an unknown assailant barging into Rossiter's office early one morning, his gun blazing. Before the second paragraph is over, the assailant is dead on the floor and Rossiter has returned to his breakfast.

As the story unfolds, there are crooked cops all over the place, honest cops struggling to maintain their integrity, quite a few shoot outs, an amateur boxing match, a mysterious inmate of a mental hospital, a missing jazz musician, a misidentified corpse, an alcoholic coroner, loan sharks, motels renting rooms by the hour, an infant girl about to be sold into white slavery, and just about every other classic inhabitant of mystery fiction you can think of.

Colbert keeps everything moving along - providing a quick, engrossing, delightful read! A new book with Jake Rossiter and Miss Jenkins is due out in early summer 2003. I can hardly wait!

Woodstock - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Woodstock - RAM