The Good Detective

This may be an instance of praising with faint damns or damning with faint praise, but the sum and substance of my review is that I very much enjoyed the book but saw it as radically flawed. The potential reader should know that this novel has been nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America (for best first novel). I am generally skeptical of such nominations because the most original work often falls afoul of the MWA's taste. In this case, the book is very derivative. We are in the deep south with a downhome detective who has tragically lost his wife and is challenged by a temptation to drink. He investigates a crime involving intense violence that is ultimately connected to a nexus of evil rooted in the distant past. There is a premium placed on lush description of the local flora and fauna and a plethora of characters with odd names and over-the-top personalities. There are magic realism dimensions to the story. Basically, we are in a James Lee Burke novel about Dave Robicheaux (and there is an explicit homage reference to Jim Burke in the course of the novel).At the same time, the protagonist has been married to an African-American woman, with whom he has had a son (also now dead). He has an African-American partner; the murder victim is African-American; past murder victims are African-Americans and (it will come as no surprise) the murderers have troglodytic views of race (troglodytic being the proper word because caves figure significantly in the plot). Hence, we have a derivative novel that pushes all of the politically-correct buttons of contemporary NYC publishing.Having said that, I must also say that the book is very well written (line-by-line) and there are a handful of killer one-liners that will make competing writers weep. While the characters are somewhat stereotypical they are also memorable. The pacing is excellent, particularly the 25%-of-the-novel climax/denouement, which is worthy of comparisons with Jonathan Kellerman. The Georgia setting is nicely realized. At the same time, the ending is largely predictable even though the conception is quite implausible and convoluted.Bottom line: I look forward to the next P.T. Marsh novel, as surprising as that might seem. I say that because the author has good chops and could really become a contender. In the meantime, readers should note the wide disparity in audience response. The book is flawed; the book has been nominated for a distinguished prize.

The biggest problem I had with THE GOOD DETECTIVE was believability or suspension of disbelief.P.T. Marsh, a detective on the Mason Falls, Georgia, police force, is kind of a wreck. His wife and son have been killed in a car accident ,and he drinks too much. He takes it out on a Neo-nazi who's been beating up his stripper girlfriend. Then the guy turns up dead and P.T. doesn't remember whether he did it our not. He tries to cover up having been there.Meanwhile he and his partner, Remy, are investigating a hate crime. A teenage black boy has been burned and lynched. It's not clear if he was alive when he was set on fire, but P.T. gets rid of the rope; it would incite a riot if the black population found out this sort of thing was still happening, but a cop shouldn't be hiding evidence.P.T. is a good detective. He soon finds out, primarily through library newspaper research this sort of thing has been happening every twenty-five years and he's pretty sure if it were possible he'd find murders every twenty-five years, going back to 1865. At the scene of the first crime, he finds the word “Rise”, as in the South will rise again. He's able to search old newspapers back to 1943 and the victims are always a boy and a girl, so he has to find the girl in the most recent crime.Then he discovers the weird stuff. The farmer on whose property the fire was set won the lottery. Another guy hit the jackpot at the racetrack, picking the first four horses in two successive races. Impossible, huh? Well, part of the reasoning behind the murders is the murders will help give the fraternal organization behind the murders luck. They always pick black families who are involved in Civil Rights. The last two had minister fathers.P.T. checks the scene from the last time this happened, on the Hester family farm, plantation or whatever. He runs into two thugs, one of whom is over seven feet tall. Really? He also encounters Wade Hester to son of the owner who appears to be suicidal. Why?P.T. and his partner try to save the girl in the most recent crime. For some reason they haven't killed her yet. But somebody in the police department is in cahoots with the Order, the fraternal organization. And this is how P.T. solves the case; he starts accusing everybody on the force, and you won't believe who was ultimately responsible, at least in respect to hiding what was happening. Neither did I.

Started out pretty well and I was enjoying it, until it stopped being a detective book and became an extremely silly book about magic and the occult. Nothing was explained, because magic doesn’t have to be. And at the end no one was arrested thru police work: 5 old men were given up (although there was no evidence against them) to protect the reputations of rich, powerful families who owed their wealth to ritually murdering a black boy and girl every 25 years. What? Yes, you read correctly; that really was the plot of this book. And it had been going on for 150 years, apparently, with the murders bringing great wealth to people...who weren’t connected with the murders. What? The detective just happened to get the book containing the names of these families from an old friend, who somehow happened to have it. And he used the threat of this ledger to blackmail ‘the order’ into having 5 of their members jailed so their racist past wouldn’t be exposed. In Georgia, where everyone has racist ancestors. That would be a shocking scandal: people in the Deep South, racist? No! What? Yes, it’s true, one of the silliest stories I’ve come across in the thousands of books I’ve read. Whoever came up with this drivel was clearly drunk, mad and stupid.

On the rocks police detective P.T.Marsh delivers a beating to a thug and warns him off hitting his girlfriend again. Message delivered; move on. And indeed, Virgil Rowe, the recipient of Marsh’s beating, does move on. A matter of hours after Marsh left Rowe nursing a bloody nose, Rowe is found dead.Although Marsh is fairly certain he had left Rowe alive, albeit bashed about a bit, he cannot be absolutely certain that he didn’t go further. Marsh has been hitting the bottle of late and the events of the previous evening and early morning are still blurry.A young black boy is found in a field with a burned rope around his neck. The victim of a hate crime? Virgil was a neo nazi. Could Marsh have killed his best suspect?The Georgia setting of this book imbibes a powerful sense of place. Georgia has always been a melting pot and Marsh finds himself tackling powerful families who have enjoyed a degree of protection for decades.As Marsh runs down the leads, it becomes clear that the boy’s killing is not a one off incident. As Marsh himself says, “something deeper” is at play.A widower, Marsh takes solace in talking to his dog and is slowly pulling himself together. The sequel will doubtless see a stronger Marsh; better able to keep his demons at bay.We all need something to make us tick though and Marsh’s sense of justice never showed signs of wavering.A very strong debut.

The Good Detective is a fast paced novel set in Georgia,. A young black teenager is abducted and horribly tortured, and the evidence soon leads to other brutal slayings going back many decades. The story takes a surprising turn into the supernatural and reveals a terrible secret held by the powerful families that rule the town.This is a very exciting novel with solid characters, and extremely well written. John McMahon brings the story to life with his description of the sights and smells of Georgia.Recommended.

Well written sometimes violent story . Race issues to the fore in the state of Georgia USA. The ' good detective' is P.T Marsh troubled as most fictional detectives tend to be. Covering historical and present day racism the story moves fast with twists and turns, I liked it a lot despite the underlying themes . PT and Remy Marsh are the two detectives running the case and their partnership is a big plus for the story. I look forward to Mr. McMahon's next book.

The descriptive narrative about rural Georgia was generally good, although the plot line was ridiculous. The biggest issue for me though was the cloying political correctness that pervaded the whole book: white hero with black female sidekick; all the bad guys are white racists whereas all the good guys are upstanding blacks etc. I shan't be rushing to buy the next one.