Another new (to me) author with multiple books out already! My favorite kind of find. John March is a private detective of private means who detects because he wants the answer - even when his client fires him. This was a snappy story with interesting characters. ( )

Overall good and engrossing, but it reads like a novel written much earlier and updated a little for 2005 when it was published. First, a lot of people still smoke. Mostly women and that didn’t ring right for 05. Someone had an electronic organizer and a cell phone. Then there were the music references - Talking Heads, Brian Eno etc. No “hip” club is going to play Eno in 2005. There was a lot of getting messages from answering machines and even some faxing. What? Weird.

Anyway, I had some of the solution figured out pretty early and just waited for John to catch up and look into certain people in Danes’s life. The ultimate killer isn’t really surprising nor the reasons for the murder. The guy was an asshole by all accounts. Then again, so is is ex-wife Nina. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want a relationship with her.

There was more about John’s family and their relationships, but it wasn’t too much. Since I have already read the 3rd book in this series (this is #2), I know the info here is setting up for even more family involvement in the next one. ( )

Noir detective story set in finance and New York city. Our detecitvie has cliched horrible things in past that drive him. The story is told in a straight forward way. and is well plotted. ( )

Not as good as Black Maps, which is one of my all-time favorites, but still an okay read.
It was only after I'd begun reading it that I saw the blurb from Ken Bruen on the back, which should have given me a clue as to the writing style in this one. If Ken Bruen likes it, with his long, tedious navel-gazing protagonists, the same might have slipped in here.
The narrator, John March, gets a little more overly descriptive in this book, and seems... duller, somehow, in this book than the first one. Duller as if his colors were different, not in a boring sort of way.
Thankfully you can skim most of the wardrobe inventory, though the mystery is a pretty lukewarm one that you may have guessed whodunit pretty early on.

Death's Little Helpers isn't enough to have soured me on Peter Spiegelman, but it's definitely not my favorite book of his. We'll see how the next in the series goes. ( )

An excellent missing person investigation that offers a few potential avenues to keep you guessing as to what happened. Likeable characters and an enjoyable series. ( )