Wednesday, May 06, 2015

First Wednesday Book Review Club: WADING INTO WAR, Scott Parker

Scott Parker's debut, WADING INTO WAR, manages to do a lot of things succinctly and well. Ben Wade is a new P.I. (a former police officer) who so far has handled the routine sort of cases P.I.s usually get. 

But this story (more a novella than a novel) puts his prosaic cases behind him as a client (a femme fatale perhaps?) hires him to find a missing man. The man is a journalist who seems to have debarked from his boat coming back from Europe.

Wade no sooner shows up at the missing man's door when bullets begin to fly.
 

From here out, the action is nonstop. We have spies, Nazis, reporters, cops and Army officials. Period detail and local atmosphere are woven in well. The dialog is crisp and realistic.

Wade is a likable character and so is the newspaper reporter he works with here. We also have a despicable villain and a lot of thugs.

What I liked very much too was the history Parker takes the time to deftly insert. He reminds us that many groups of people were agitating to have their opinions listened to and followed at the time. The complexity of U.S entry into World War II is vividly detailed.

I'm sure we will be hearing more about 1940s Houston and the war itself from Scott Parker. A very fine first entry.
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8 comments:

Sarah Laurence said...

Congrats, Scott! Sounds like a fun read. Patti, thanks for the review.

Dana King said...

Damn it. I not ten minutes ago finished culling some books from the TBR list, and now I see Parker's is out. Back to work...

Stacy said...

Sounds like an awesome time period to set a mystery. I don't read many mysteries, but this sounds appealing.

Thanks for the review, and congrats to Scott!

Anonymous said...

This does sound like a good read, Patti. And the historical 'feel' to it is interesting.

Scott D. Parker said...

Patti - Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you enjoyed the book.

Sarah - Thanks! WADING INTO WAR will always be special because it was my first published book.

Dana - Well, the good news, like Patti wrote, WADING will not take you long to read. But then there's the next book coming along later this month.

Stacy - I've always liked old black-and-white movies and this was an idea that seemed to flow in that vein.

Margot - I hold two degrees in history so I hope I got all the history parts correct.

Barrie said...

I'm very much looking forward to reading this! Thanks for reviewing, Patti!

Linda McLaughlin said...

Sounds really good, and I LOVE the cover! Heading off to Amazon now.

Congratulations on your first published book Scott!

Rose said...

Congrats to Scott! I'm a mystery lover, and I especially enjoy those with some historical background, so I may have to check this out. Thanks for the review, Patti.