Finally finished the book club selection I've already been talking about (
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster), and another Moonstone Graphic Novel, this one featuring one of my all-time favorite detectives, Pat Novac (from the old 1940's radio show starring Jack Webb (Novak) and Raymond Burr (his nemesis, Police Inspector Hellman),
Pat Novak, for Hire. The name of the graphic novel is, well,
Pat Novak, for Hire, and centers around the now aged and retired detective, who is currently in the care of his granddaughter, as he is spurred to re-open one of his old cases. It is classic Novac, with all the wonderful one-liners and on-going noir narration that you'd expect. It's written by Steven Grant, who obviously did his homework on the character.
The lines are classic Novak:
"Hellman had always been the giving type. Especially when it came to beatings and third degrees. He had his good points, too. But there wasn't enough bourbon in the Bay Area to bring them to mind."
"If San Francisco's a cesspool, Contra Costa's where it flushes into. Suicide's too quick for some people, so they move out here and stretch it out for forty or fifty years."
"It was a nice house, if you wanted to know where the skeletons were buried and didn't mind becoming one of them."
5 out of 5 stars. (As this is the second Moonstone graphic novel I've recommended in a month, I hope no one begins thinking I work for them!
)