I tend to like indie authors out of principle and I think that's one reason I sampled Albert Simon's
Henry Wright murder series. The first book,
For Sale in Palm Springs, is available free at
kobobooks,
smashwords, and at a very reasonable 99¢ from
Amazon. The series concerns Henry Wright, a retired police chief from Eagle River, Wisconsin who is also recently widowed. He's relocated to Palm Springs where bodies continually turn up in his path.
A real estate agent, Rex Thornbird, is murdered in the opening pages, left in a bloody mess in the kitchen of a 1950s home he has listed. Given this is Palm Springs, celebrities and gay themes recur: Henry's housemate, Charles, is a retired school teacher; Henry's love interest, the office manager who worked for Rex, assumes Henry is gay; and an "underworld" of gay activities provides further background spice. But this isn't a gay novel: it's an old fashioned who dunnit that's set in Palm Springs.
The drawbacks are stylistic: Simon does not write graciously -- he writes technically. By this I mean, the story is told as if perched on Henry's shoulder and every thing he does is described: Henry did this, then that, then that, then this. Little of these actions move the story along and character development is limited. I did find myself impatient for the story be over; this is not what I'd call "a good read" -- something that drags you in and keeps the fires burning to the end.
Still, it's got its moments and if you live in or have visited Palm Springs, it's probably more atmospheric since you'll be able to pinpoint every location thanks to Simon's technical approach. Perhaps Simon's style has grown richer as his experience grew with the series?