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Title: The Pearl Harbor Murders by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0-425-17943-5 Publisher: Prime Crime Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Competent mystery, very good atmospherics
Comment: I'm of mixed minds about this whole trend of taking famous real-world people and turning them into murder-solving detectives. From a writer's standpoint, I can see why such an idea would be tempting -- not only do you get a "character" pre-invented, as it were, but you also, as author Max Allan Collins admits to doing in his acknowledgements, can write about people you particularly admire or are interested in. Much the same reasoning applies, I suppose, to readers of these kinds of stories. If you, too, are a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, seeing him and his son investigate a murder might be a very compelling read.
Myself, I'm more a student of the Pearl Harbor attack, and I read this mystery in part for the story itself, but mostly to see how the author wove the true-life events of late 1941 into his story. And the answer is, pretty well (of course, he's had some practice at this, having written several other disaster-based murder mysteries as well).
The crime-solving part of the story is a fairly standard follow-the-clues/unravel-the-secrets tale, and if it had been set in Dubuque in 1974, I don't think I would have given it more than three stars. But it's the way the tale is woven into the larger historical context of the Pearl Harbor attack (and it's not giving away any plot secrets to say that the attack ends up being part of the story) that's most interesting to me, and the author pulled it off quite well. True-life events, like the Mori "flowers in bloom" radiotelephone message (which may or may not have been in code), or a front-porch meeting between Colonel Kendall Fielder and General Walter Short on the evening of December 6, are drafted into service as part of this story. Author Collins credits his researcher, and lists in his acknowledgements many of the key titles in Pearl Harbor historiography, including the Prange trilogy. I second that commendation, because the factual scaffolding on which this story hangs seems pretty solid to me. Collins also does a nice job with the general "atmospherics" of late-1941 Honolulu.
On the whole, the setting and the real-world history involved elevate the workmanlike mystery quite a bit. And if you happen to be a Burroughs fan, so much the better.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting setting, so-so mystery
Comment: Setting a murder mystery in Pearl Harbor, just prior to the Japanese attack makes this an interesting read. The bits of history are fascinating and compensate for the rather pedestrian plot. Combining fictional and historical figures works well as they seamlessly combine, but the basic problem is the mystery is no mystery. The plot moves along at a good clip; but it leads to a foregone conclusion. Using Edgar Rice Burroughs as the detective fits in with the actual events, but it seems almost an afterthought, and is merely another hook to get readers interested. Not a bad little page turner, but nothing else.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting background overcomes ordinary plot
Comment: Most of the time when I read a mystery I don't really care about the mystery part. I mean, how many ways can you solve a crime, when literally thousands of mysteries have been written in recorded history. This one is no different. We get a murder, and someone is found standing over the body with blood on his hands. As this happens fairly early in the book, we can now eliminate ol' bloody hands as the suspect.
So what I look for is what kind of story is woven around what is usually the same old thing. In the case of a historical novel, I want to get a feeling for what people are thinking at the time. The fact that this one takes place a day or two before the Pearl Harbor invasion seems like a great situation. I liked it a bit, but still have a lot of problems with it.
First, as mentioned above, the story is very ordinary. Yes, you know when somebody has blood on their hands early in the story, he's probably not the murderer. But there were also predictable things that deal with what I was interested in, which was the historical events surrounding the story. First, we have both German and Japanese characters. As we are at war with them, or about to be, what a surprise that virtually all of them are unpleasant characters. Also, we get to see the time-worn tactic of having those in authority insist nothing bad is going to happen, just so we the reader can smirk and wait for them to be told "I told you so". I'm sure these situations occurred, but it trivializes an important event.
The part I dislike the most however, is why we need to have a celebrity enter the story as an amateur detective. I love Larry McMurtry novels, but hate it when he puts real-life characters in fictional settings. And I don't like it here. I don't care that the author had the writer of Tarzan as one of his boyhood heroes, and find this device only makes it more unbelievable.
So why three stars? Well, we DO get a decent glimpse into life in Hawaii around World War II. Those younger people that believe they invented sex can see that libidos ran very high in those days (and any other time, for that matter). And with the definate threat that the hunky guys might be blown to pieces at any time in war, the ladies were no doubt a lot more accomodating than you might think in that time. Think about that the next time you see your grandmother, or even your mother.
And the author does a good job of describing the actual attack. This, to me, is the meat of the story. The fact that it came when people were least prepared for it (early Sunday morning). The fact the people at first assumed it was a military exercise. And the quick sobering up that all of a sudden made America a little more grown up. This just about overcomes the "main" plot that is little more, if not less, than a TV detective story.
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Title: The Lusitania Murders by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0425186881 Publisher: Prime Crime Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Hindenburg Murders by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0425174093 Publisher: Prime Crime Pub. Date: 12 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: The Titanic Murders by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0425168107 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Stolen Away by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0451202414 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: 06 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: True Detective by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0743458966 Publisher: I Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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