Anne Argula’s Walla Walla Suite doesn’t come out until September, so for now the best most folks will be able to do is pre-order this mystery. Cities like Boston, New York, and Los Angeles get far more mysteries set in their environs. But Seattle seems to be up and coming: G. M. Ford, J. A. Jance, Curt Colbert, and now Anne Argula. And Anne Argula is definitely a better writer than our most famous writer of Seattle-based mysteries, J. A. Jance. For one, Argula doesn’t stop to explain Seattle to non-natives every time something local comes up. Some times I feel like I’m reading a geography or culture lesson when reading Jance. Now, some great writers like Dennis Lehane do a bit of this too, so it’s not like it’s a bar to a good story. Argula uses Seattle as a prop more than as a lesson plan, and in fact a note at the back of my Advance Readers Copy apologizes for leaving some of the landscape and architecture as it is in her head, rather than how it’s become during the time she wrote the novel.
The protagonist is an ex-Spokane cop (Quinn) trying to establish herself as a P.I. in Seattle. A girl who works in her building is murdered, and she manages to finagle her way into getting paid to investigate the disappearance and murder. Another of her employers works as a mitigation investigator (M.I.), someone who tries to keep people off death row with life sentences. Quickly she’s no longer employed looking for the killer because someone turns up with the dead girl’s car, and she’s helping keep that guy from the executioner. Sort of. It’s a bit complicated, but it works. Argula even calls out the conflict of interest in the case of the M.I. Soon it becomes apparent thought that some of the people involved aren’t telling the truth.
I like the book. It’s worth pre-ordering. Quinn is a believable character. The dialog is great. And the author doesn’t fall back on so many of the normal crime novel clichés, though there are a couple. But they aren’t particularly intrusive. And I think the author does an awesome job at capturing Seattle’s vibe. Not particularly gritty (this is not a hard-boiled
story) but also not nicey-nice. The book opens with some bums making a racket in the street. But they end up being real people, with a part to play in the book, and yet they are still alcoholic bums through and through. Which is something you’ll see in Seattle. We are, after all, the original home of Skid Road.
Title: Walla Walla suite (a room with no view)
Author: Anne Argula (Darryl Ponicsan)
Series: Quinn book 2
Imprint / publisher: Ballantine / Random House
Format: Advance readers copy
Length: 271 p.
Publication date: September 2007
ISBN-10: 0-345-49842-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-345-49842-7
Subject: Private investigators — Washington (State) — Walla Walla — Fiction
Subject: Murderers — Fiction
Subject: Walla Walla (Wash.) — Fiction
LC classification: PS3601.R49 W35 2007
