The blurb on the back cover describes Barnes' Carlotta Carlyle as "the gutsy six-foot, red-haired taxi-driving private investigator". Well, they forgot insomniac ex-cop blues fan, but never mind. Carlotta is definitely on a par with fellow hardboiled female PIs VI Warshawski and Kat Colorado.
"A gute haskhole iz shoyn a halbe arbet" ("A good beginning is the job half done"), as Carlotta's Jewish grandmother would say. The beginning of this novel is certainly intriguing, setting the tone for the rest of the book.
Dorothy Jade Cameron aka Thea Janis was fourteen when she wrote Nightmare's Dawn, fifteen when she died in 1971. Her body is buried in the family plot and a man is in prison for her murder, so how can she have written about the fall of the Berlin Wall?
Employed first by Thea's uncle (or is he?) and then by her mother, it is Carlotta's job to find the truth. Is the new manuscript the first client brings her really Thea's? lf so, whose body is buried in her grave? And what other secrets are there to uncover in Thea's wealthy and famous family?
As Carlotta conducts her investigation, Barnes skilfully leads the reader through a tale of blackmail, kidnapping and madness, where the answers lurk far under the surface and nothing is completely clear until the end.
Cold Case is a worthy successor to Linda Barnes' earlier Carlotta Carlyle mysteries.
