Robert Germaux

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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As I drove away from the center, I thought about Asaan and Anthony and Franklin High School and the gangs. And scones. Food is never far from my mind, and I didn’t have anything else to do at the moment, so I drove home and parked the Camry in my driveway and walked to Starbucks. I can think and eat at the same time, a skill that I have demonstrated on numerous occasions. No need not to do so again.

WHAT'S LEAVING THE LAW ABOUT?
Before Jeremy Barnes became a P.I., he was a teacher—a dedicated and idealistic one. Which is largely why he left the profession. The American education system is not a place for idealists. One student that he made an impact on comes back into his life fifteen years later.

Laretta Warren is now a single mother, doing her best. Laretta's son, Anthony, is in a gang and is in real danger of legal problems if he doesn't change direction. He's also in real danger period. Laretta remembered how JB inspired her to keep going—now she wants him to inspire her son to get out of the gang and get on a better path.

JB has no illusions that he's going to be able to make any difference. But he remembers Laretta's spirit. He respects that, he wants to honor her wishes, and do what he can for her. Even if it's to take on a Quixotic task.

While he tries to talk Anthony into wanting to leave, he knows it'll take more than gaining his trust and then convincing him. So he sets out to gain leverage against the leader of the gang. As difficult as it will be to get Anthony to want to leave, that's simpler than getting him out. He also needs to understand the gangs better—the landscape has changed a lot in the years since he taught high school.

This leads him to reconnect with the school's Vice Principal, and his friends in the police department connect him with the officer who'll be the most helpful—both the V.P. and police lead him to a community activist who is instrumental in keeping the peace between rival gangs in the area. JB learns a good deal about them and the way the leadership thinks—now, will it be enough?

JB AND LAURA
So, if you read this in order of publication, you already know where the relationship between JB and Laura is going—if you're reading this chronologically, you met her in the previous book, and have a pretty good idea where it's going.

Either way, their relationship is beyond the establishment stage, but they're still figuring themselves out as a unit. One of the biggest things for Laura to reckon with is the violence that JB occasionally runs into. Is she prepared to deal with the stress and worry? Is it worth it? She's still working her way through that—and it should take a little while.

Laura doesn't often remind me of Susan Silverman (unlike JB, who constantly reminds me of Spenser), but she really does sound like her as she works her way through the danger inherent in JB's work with Anthony. For what it's worth, I think Laura deals with it a little better than Susan does early on, but it's obviously a struggle for her.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT LEAVING THE LAW
Once again, Germaux has delivered a thoroughly entertaining PI novel. Spending time in a Germaux novel (Jeremy Barnes or Daniel Hays) is a guaranteed good time with characters you can't help but like.

I enjoyed getting more of a glimpse into JB"s past than we've gotten before—and the way he reacts to Laretta (both as he remembers her and as he observes her) is exactly how you want a teacher to respond to a student. It just makes a PI you already were invested in and was rooting for all the more likable.

I halfway expected the final reveal—but that didn't stop it from being effective, it just made the most dramatic sense. I'd much rather a scene to be justified and successful than an out-of-blue surprise, anyway. Germaux satisfied that preference while delivering what I expected with a motivation that I didn't expect.

I had a lot of fun with this book—good characters and prose that's just smooth and easy reading. I'm about done with Germaux's detective fiction—while I'm all for being a completionist, I'm not crazy about crossing that last one off my list. Thankfully, I have a few other books by him to get to.… (més)

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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Tony’s Bar and Grill was your typical local hangout. Located in a working-class neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else and their business, it had gone through several changes of ownership over the years, but the one constant had always been that strangers weren’t particularly welcome, and anyone who lived more than ten blocks away was a stranger.

I lived on the other side of town.

When I walked into Tony’s on a warm spring night, the place didn’t suddenly become silent, the way things happen in the movies, but there was a noticeable drop in the level of conversation.

WHAT'S SMALL BYTES ABOUT?
JB's oldest friend asks him to give one of her friends a call—her husband had recently been murdered, and she's dissatisfied with what the police are telling her. Could JB look into things for her?

Terry Pendleton is shot outside his home on his way to work. The police (primarily a lazy and racist lead detective) have determined that it was a mugging gone wrong—despite no evidence of theft, or anything else, really. The widow and many of his colleagues deem that out of character—if a mugger had approached Pendleton demanding money, he'd have been given it all without a struggle.

Barnes isn't convinced by Rachel Pendelton or the others at the firm, but he thinks there might be something to it. Once he meets the lead detective, JB wants to prove him wrong just out of distaste for the man. But before he really gets anywhere at all in the investigation, a man with ties to organized crime warns JB from continuing to look into things.

JB has no idea what he might be getting into, but at this point, he sure knows it's something...

NOT TECHNICALLY A PREQUEL
In the Author's Note before Chapter 1, Germaux says this was the first he wrote in the series, but he published books #4 and #5 in the series first. So this serves as a prequel, if you go in publication order—not something I'm used to seeing in a P.I. series, but it works.

I think I would have guessed that this was the first JB Barnes that he wrote even if he hadn't said it. There's something—maybe just confidence, maybe just the experience of having written other complete novels, probably something else—that's missing from this that was present in Hard Court or In the Eye.

I'M NOT SURE ABOUT THAT TITLE
There are only so many things that "Bytes" can apply to. As this is a Detective Novel, you know some sort of cybercrime is involved—at the very least some sort of electronic data is going to be very important to the P.I. wrapping things up.

When there is zero discussion of anything along those lines (at least in reference to JB's case), it's hard to believe that he's uncovering anything that matters up until a related concept shows up.

Thankfully, the book was interesting, the characters were engaging and the subplots were compelling, and JB's narrative voice keeps you turning pages. So even while wondering when we were going to get anything computer-related, I was enjoying things. Still, that title doesn't do the text any favors.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT SMALL BYTES?

Along the way, I dropped the envelope in a mailbox and thought about what Uncle Leo had told me the day I’d first expressed an interest in joining him in the business. The most important thing, he’d said, was learning to balance the highs and the lows, “‘cause you’re gonna have both, the good and the bad. Ya gotta learn to balance them, son, or the demons’ll be dancin’ in your head way too many nights.”

I’m still learning.

With both of Germaux's series—the Jeremy Barnes and Daniel Hays books—I've said that each book feels like you're returning to a well-established series that you've been reading for a while. And, given the order he wrote these books in, that makes sense. But even Small Bytes feels like it's not the beginning, but something mid-series. Sure, this is a turning point in the series, but there's no sense of Germaux introducing people and relationships, just picking up where he left off. I really appreciate that.

Small Bytes is a fun read, and I'm glad I read it, but I'm glad it's not the first book I read by Germaux or about JB. But even here at the beginning, I want to stress, there are a few passages that just sing. Germaux has the knack for spinning a solid PI tale and captures the feel, voice, and style of the best of the genre.

Which is why I'll be back for the others in the series soon—and why I'll jump on anything else Germaux has in store for JB, and why I'll suggest you give him a try, too.… (més)

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S SMALL TALK ABOUT?
The area around Pittsburgh, we're told early in this book, is made up of a vast number of local jurisdictions that are fiercely independent and don't necessarily cooperate too well with each other—even when it comes to crimes being committed in various jurisdictions. After one recent crime spree took too much of a toll and had too little cooperation between various law enforcement agencies, a Special Assignment Squad answering directly to the Chief of Police is formed to deal with crimes of that type.

This team's first real trial comes some weeks after its formation when a series of young women are being strangled. There's no sexual assault, no robbery, simply a strangulation. There's no connection—appearance, socio-economic status, profession, location—between the victims. If there's anything not random about the selection of the victims, no one can see it.

Daniel Hays, the head of the SAS, is the lead investigator on the first murder before it's officially a SAS matter. But it doesn't take him long to assume that there will be another —probably many—after looking at the evidence, scene, and victim. Sadly, he's proven correct fairly shortly. As more and more victims are found, it's clear that the killer is getting more brazen, and the pressure—from within and from outside the SAS—increases.

THE KILLER'S PERSPECTIVE
97 times out of one hundred, I'd rather not get the killer's perspective (either told in first or third person) as well as the detective's. I'm clearly in the minority, however, even judging solely on how frequently we're given this setup.

Germaux handles this device as well as anyone could want. It does add a little to the novel and helps us understand the killer better than we would if we only had Daniel's perspective. It also helped me to really dislike the character—you know, in case randomly killing women wasn't enough. The guy is too impressed with himself, he's a showoff and a blowhard with a penchant for monologuing (to himself or others). Some of that goes with the territory, obviously, but there's something about him I liked even less than your typical budding serial killer.

For example, unless something is wrong with you, you're charmed by Lecter in Silence of the Lambs—yes, he's a deranged killer that needs to be kept away from people, but you can't help but like the guy. Robert B. Parker gives us the killer's POV in Crimson Joy, and all I wanted was for him to be stopped—I don't know if I ever cared about him one way or the other. But this guy? I actively disliked him, in addition to wanting Hays and the team to get him off the streets.

ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES OF READING THIS NOW
I almost never read books out of order anymore—I used to do it all the time, but now my default mode is: Start at Book 1 and move forward. But because it was for a book tour, I read the second Daniel Hays novel first. It was nice to see that gripes and questions I had while reflecting on One by One had been anticipated and dealt with in these pages.

The downside is that there are some things that didn't hold as much suspense for me because I knew the status of various characters in the sequel. There was one scene that held absolutely no suspense for me, and I regretted that lack as I read it. Thankfully, Germaux still handled that scene in a way I didn't expect him to, so while it came with the resolution I expected, the journey to it was a nice surprise.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT SMALL TALK?
Before I wrote this post, I read what I said about the sequel just to compare the two. Plot-specifics aside, I could have just re-used that post here.

Small Talk has an interesting and solid approach to the Serial Killer, some nice twists, and a good group of core characters.

Professionals who treat each other as professionals, with respect and camaraderie. It could be made slightly more interesting or challenging if there were a bit more friction in the team or spillover from Daniel's personal life (for example). But that's only marginally more interesting.

I do wish there was a greater sense of urgency to this. The SAS is driven to find the killer, but they're not obsessive about it. They clock out at the end of the day, go home and bake, or go on a date, or something else. And as nice as those side stories were, and as realistic as it might be, it's somewhat dissatisfying when it comes to drama.

Like with all of Germaux's writing, there's a pleasantness to reading this. No matter how dire things may be, the book is just a pleasant experience. It's a fast, gratifying read with some fun moments and justice prevailing. It's hard to go wrong with that.

I recommend this—like all of Germaux's Crime Fiction—especially if you're not in the mood for gritty depictions of police detectives going about their work. In my earlier post, I compared them to "blue sky" dramas like NCIS, Burn Notice, or White Collar, and the same is true here. And sometimes that's just what the doctor ordered.… (més)

There are plenty of laugh out loud moments in this newest release from Mr. Germaux. Here’s some background. He’s a retired teacher who taught in a tough school, surrounded by a tough environment. For those of us who grew up in a similar setting, we were lucky to have teachers like him. For all of us, I want to say a heartfelt thank you. Yes, I could’ve easily been one of his kids – but I digress.
This book is obviously a sentimental journey. I enjoyed taking this trip. As Mr. Germaux flashes back to a particular time or place, he brings us along where we get to enjoy his funny musings. Yes, I too hate to park between two behemoths also known as SUVs that weren’t there when I parked. He slips in fate or karma. We actually shared a similar circumstance. If I had taken another class, I would’ve missed the chance to meet my future husband. As you read his thoughts, you will stumble on quite a few shared sentiments. Yes, these are the hilarious, and another reviewer used the word, poignant reflections of a gifted writer. Am I rambling? Yes, too many times we read a book and wonder, what was that I just absorbed! Not here. Get this book and enjoy!… (més)