I love these mysteries featuring Quinn. In the first book, she's still a cop in a small town in rural Washington. In this one, she's been a private investigator in Seattle for a while. Some of the appeal for me is the location, some is that the character is an older woman, but a lot is just that they're well written. Suspense, crackling dialogue, quirky characters. It did bother me a bit that the plot of this one resembles Armistead Maupin's 'The Night Listener'.

Intense book, plot revolves around a depressed screenwriter's obsession with a dying boy with a long history of abuse. The narrative is done by a tough and funny female PI prone to hot flashes, her one-liners make the grim subject matter a bit easier to bear. The book is not a mystery, nor horror, nor whodunit either, will probably leave you asking questions about our notions of reality and fantasy. ( )

Since the Argula pen name is out of the bag anyway, I'm gonna talk about the real deal here, Darryl Ponicsan (aka Anne Argula), because he has been a favorite author of mine since the early 70s. Ponicsan's greatest strength in his writing has always been dialogue, a skill that served him well as a screenwriter in Hollywood for 25 years or more. (Look him up; all those stars he name-dropped in this book were people he actually worked with.) That skill was evident in his first novel, The Last Detail, which resulted in the much-praised Jack Nicholson film of the same name. Another novel, Cinderella Liberty, enjoyed similar success both in print and on the big screen. There is a continuity in Ponicsan's early novels. Perhaps my favorite was Goldengrove, the sad tale of Ernie Buddusky, who was the brother of Billy "Badass" Buddusky of The Last Detail. And there was another, Beef Buddusky, in The Accomplice. There is also a real facility demonstrated with the regional dialect and slang of the Pennsylvania coal-mining country that gave us Ponicsan and his many colorful characters, which now includes PI Quinn of the Argula novels.

Thirty-some years ago I wrote a review of Tom Mix Died for Your Sins, Ponicsan's sixth novel. In it I pointed out how the author followed a rather fascinating pattern of rewriting earlier classic works of literature. The Last Detail was a modern version of Melville's Billy Budd; Andoshen, PA mirrored Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio; Goldengrove paralleled Updike's The Centaur; Cinderella Liberty was a navy tale of The Book of Job; The Accomplice - Bernard Malamud's The Assistant; and the Tom Mix book was a beautifully crafted fictional memoir that made you remember Twain's Tom and Huck books. I was careful to point out in my review, published in the now-defunct BestSellers magazine, that this observation was in no way meant to detract from Ponicsan's considerable talent. Quite the contrary. Darryl Ponicsan can write like nobody's business! Back in the early 70s I was teaching freshman English in a small college, and I used The Last Detail and Billy Budd in tandem for a couple of years in class. Ponicsan beat out Melville in popularity every semester. Students loved Billy Buddusky more than Billy Budd, which was probably predictable, given the contemporary nature of the book and its Vietnam era setting.

Here's the thing. If Ponicsan used this device of rewriting the classics, both ancient and modern, in his 70s novels - and they were all excellent - then odds are probably pretty good that his female alter ego, "Anne Argula", may be doing the same thing. I must admit I did not explore that possibility in the first two Quinn books, but I may have to go back and reread them now. Because Krapp's Last Cassette is not an arbitrarily chosen title. Take a look at the book's epigraph, a quote from playwright Samuel Beckett. I think I may have read something by Beckett back in college, but I have, perhaps mercifully, forgotten whatever it was. But one of Beckett's many plays is one called Krapp's Last Tape, which is, incidentally, referred to towards the end of this Quinn book. If the Beckett play is one about a man in his late sixties listening to tapes he has made at earlier stages of his life - reflecting somewhat sardonically on that life - then think about what's going on in this latest Argula book. Alex Krapp is a man who spent twenty-some years in Hollywood after having written several novels - a man who is now reflecting on all those years. Think Darryl Ponicsan, gentle readers.

I know I have said very little about the ingenious and creepily compelling plot and characters of Krapp's Last Cassette here, not to mention all that great dialogue, "ain't"? If you've already read the book, then I don't need to tell you how good it is. And if you haven't read it, here's a hint: it is damn good! No, what I wanted to tell all you really serious readers out there is this: if, after reading only two or three Anne Argula books you find yourself a fan, then do yourself a favor. Find the Ponicsan novels and read them. They are great too. Sadly, most are now out of print and can only be found used. But if you like Quinn, then you will like the Buddusky clan too - and John Baggs and Tom Mix and Kid Bandera and all the other colorful and memorable characters Darryl Ponicsan created so many years ago. I for one look will look forward to the next book, whether the spine reads Ponicsan or Argula, because this is a writer who will grab you on page one and not let go til the last page. ( )