Friday, October 19, 2007

One Man Dies (Jackson Donne) by Dave White

Having already read Dave's short stories online I've always been waiting for the first novel to come out. Dave has a few things in common with myself he's a younger writer who started out in Thrilling Detective around the same time as I did and his PI is also a younger, hipper one like my Noah Milano.
In this novel we follow Jackson Donne in his investigation of the death of his pal Gerry. He's also hired to shadow a woman's husband suspecting he's cheating on her. As these kinds of plotlines often do in PI novels they turn out to be related and Jackson has to take on some nasty drugdealers to survive his cases.
An important secondary character is Donne's ex-partner with the police, Bill Martin. This character tries to clean up his act after years of corruption and dating Jackson's girl who died in an accident several years back.
Donne and Martin are both pretty flawed characters, sharing a past of drugs and corruption. It's these characters and the darkness inherent to their lives that make this an interesting read.
Dark, fast-paced and firmly set in 2YK this is a good example of how the PI novel can be kept around for years to come.