Bad Guys - Linwood Barclay

   2005; 370 pages.  Book 2 (out of 4) in the “Zack Walker” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Crime Humor.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

     Recently, there have been a couple cases of breaking-&-entering around the city at high-end men’s stores, and Zack Walker, feature writer for the local newspaper The Metropolitan is covering part of the investigation.

    Okay, so he’s not covering the criminal investigation; that would be infringing on coworker Dick Colby’s “crime reporter” turf, and Dick’s known to be very territorial about it.  Actually, all Zack’s doing is taking notes while riding along with Lawrence Jones, a private investigator hired by an owner of a men’s store that has yet to be burglarized.

    “Riding” is an overstatement.  For the most part, they’re spending the whole night sitting in an unmarked car, watching who drives by the store, and trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.  Zack’s note-taking so far – he’s going to write a feature article about the PI business from all this – has covered what not to drink before a stakeout (no caffeine!) and how to … um … deal with excretory functions, if needed, without getting out of the car.

    When another private investigator dies in a hit-and-run while watching a different men’s store, it could have been an unfortunate accident.  But then when Lawrence is assaulted, it starts to look like a pattern.

    And Zack just might be the next target.

 What’s To Like...

    Bad Guys is the second book in Linwood Barclay’s Zack Walker series.  I read Book One back in 2014; it is reviewed here.  Book 4 was published in 2007 and there have been none after that, so I presume this is a completed series.

     The book is written in the first-person POV (Zack’s), and with 40 chapters covering 370 pages, it’s easy to find a good place to stop.  There aren’t a lot of characters to follow, but they’re all fun to meet-&-greet, even the baddies.  Unlike Book One, this is a whodunit, as well as a “whydunit”.

     Besides the crime angle, there’s also an equally interesting second plotline involving Zack’s family life.  Zack loves his wife Sarah, but she also happens to be his boss at the newspaper, and that leads to some touchy moments.  They have two kids – Angie, aged 18, and Paul, aged 16 – and all parties cope with the usual teenage/parent anxieties.  Zack can’t help himself, he wants to know what’s going on in his kids' lives, and his efforts to find things out lead to some awkward-but-funny situations.

     I liked the reference to the “Homer Simpson and his potato chips in space” nod, and the “Girl Scout leaders in stilettos” reference was a hoot.  I also learned that in a race between an SUV and a hybrid car, put your money on the SUV.  And be careful when taking a sip from a bottle of Snapple.

     The ending is clever, exciting, and stutter-step, the latter thanks to nifty twist that I never saw coming.  Overall, I was impressed by the “tightness” in the plot structure.  A half dozen other plot threads arise for Zack to suss out; they all get resolved by the end of the book, and it felt like all of the events along the way, no matter how small, factored into one plot thread or another.

 Excerpts...

    “So when you’re writing, doing your work, doesn’t that help get your mind off other things?  Isn’t that a good way to reduce your anxiety level?

    I nodded.  “For the most part.”

    “So, what are you working on now?  Another book?”

    Well, I’m back with a paper now, The Metropolitan, doing features.  You can’t exactly make a living writing books.”

    “I liked that one you did, about the guy goes back in time to kill the inventor of those hot-air hand dryers in men’s rooms before he’s born.  That wasn’t a bestseller?”

    “No,” I said.

    Harley looked surprised.  (loc. 136)

    “How about you?” I asked.  “You seeing someone?”  Paul put the fork into his mouth, his cheek poking out on one side.  I went on, “What about, what was her name, Wendy?”

    Paul shook his head.  He chewed a few times, washed the linguine down with some water.  “I never went out with her.  Besides, she has a butter face.”

    “A butter face?”

    “Yeah.  Everything’s great, but her face.”  (loc. 3117)

 Kindle Details…

    At the moment, you can pick up Bad Guys for a mere  $1.99 at Amazon.  Book One, Bad Move, sells for $8.99; Book 3, Lone Wolf, is $7.99, and the final book, Stone Rain, also goes for $1.99 right now.

    Linwood Barclay offers another dozen-plus full-length e-novels at Amazon, all in the crime fiction genre and, I believe, most written in a more serious vein.  They sell for anywhere from $4.99 to $18.99.

“Girl Scout leaders wear stilettos?”  (loc. 1025 )

    There’s not much to quibble about in Bad Guys.  There’s a lot of cussing in it; I counted 14 instances in the first 10%, and I think that’s representative of the rest of the book.  I’d call it excessive if it weren’t for the fact that Linwood Barclay has the writing skills to make it feel like the cussing fits the mood.  If you prefer your mysteries to be cozies, you should probably skip this series.

     Other than that, the only nit I can pick is that I figured out Trevor’s “secret” immediately, and long before Zack did.

    Bad Guys is a fast-paced delightful crime-humor tale that kept me turning the pages wondering what was going to happen next.  I enjoyed Bad Move as well, and don’t know why it took me six years to read the sequel.  I also don’t know why Linwood Barclay stopped the series after four books; here’s hoping he restarts it at some point in the near future. 

     8½ Stars.   We’ll close with two teasers from the book that I’d put in the category “sounds dirty but isn’t”: a character’s nickname of “Cheese Dick Colby”, and a snippet of text “You’re hot, Dad, very hot.  But please pull your pants back up.”