This is subtitled "A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery." Hmmm. Subtitles worry me for some reason. Do the authors feel that they must explain themselves lest their readers be unclear on their intentions? Do they want to ensure that the right readers find them? Is it the decision of the publishers? This particular subtitle reads like a cover blurb rather than a subtitle. And since when are there subtitles on mystery stories anyway. Beyond Murder blankety blah blah: a Fred J Muggs mystery, the inclusion of a subtitle seems a bit excessive. I guess I think lengthy explanatory subtitles should be reserved for those textbooks on abstruse topics that no one really wants to buy - Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach. Right. Obviously, that writer intends to do it better than any of the thousands who have preceded him. At any rate, I found this book neither humorous nor hard-boiled - scarcely even soft-boiled, except for the fact that it took place in New Orleans in the summertime when pretty much everything is somewhat boiled.
The whole thing was a little diffuse, but Mr. Dunbar managed to connect most of the loose ends into the same evil plot before it was all done. There were a fair number of bodies left lying around, the mob, the Vietnamese mob, a group of earnest environmentally conscious college students, a wise-cracking secretary, a barely aware drunk whose sole claim to anything is a giant mudbug (crawdad, to the uninitiated) float which he drove in all parades, and so on. I don't think many of the cliches were missing. Still made pretty good reading.
One more note, I have no clue regarding the significance of the title. He found a string of beads in the gutter at one point and passed it on at another. There was a parade at which, in true New Orleans style, beads and other things were thrown. But neither seemed to have any real connection with the story. So - another "I don't get it." Nothing new there. I don't get a lot of stuff.
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