Having read Walla Walla Suite a couple of years ago, I thought it would be a good idea to search out the first Quinn novel, Homicide My Own. I knew the premise was that of someone trying to solve their own murder. However, this book ends up on my not highly recommended list after finishing. Both plot and characterization bothered me.

In Walla Walla Suite, Quinn is much more believably burned-out and cynical. Her partner, Odd Gunderson, becomes possessed by the soul of a dead person, and wants to solve the murder. That part I get. What I disliked was that he often just knew he had to do something. Lazy writing. Better told were his occasional visions and recollections of his previous life as the victim.

As for the crime and investigation, little of it survives the smell test. Sent by their lieutenant to Shalish Island to pick up a wanted suspect, Quinn and Gunderson become involved in the cold case on the other side of the state. Sending a couple of beat cops across the state after the end of a long shift is already suspect enough. Sending them without the chance to shower, with instructions to get the suspect and return without sleeping, and then to work another shift on return? Nuh-uh. And then when they get there and get delayed, the same lieutenant (who I would presume would normally have the sense to go home himself), lends Quinn and Gunderson to the tribal police for a cold case they aren’t even investigating. Why?

I did like Ponicsan’s setting for the book though, which seems to be loosely based on Lummi Island. Quinn and Gunderson drop into a small-town atmosphere where everyone knows everyone else’s business. But despite the chumminess of the locals, the place is big and spread out enough that it’s possible to keep things from others with some effort.

I’m hoping that I’ll like Krapp’s Last Cassette better.

Other blogged reviews:

• Evil Editor’s Gallimaufry (not exactly a review, but worth reading!)
• Kaijsa Reads

Title: Homicide My Own
Author: Anne Argula (Darryl Ponicsan)
Series: Quinn; 1
Imprint / publisher: Pleasure Boat Studio
Format: Paperback
Length: 219 p.
Publication date: 2005
ISBN-10: 1-929355-21-1
Subject: Police — Washington (State) — Fiction
Subject: Indians of North America — Fiction
Subject: Fugitives from justice — Fiction
Subject: Washington (State) — Fiction
LC classification: PS3601.R49H66 2005

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