From Publishers Weekly
If this first mystery from fantasy author Rosenberg (Not Exactly the Three Musketeers) were a movie, it might be titled "The Boyz in the 'Hood Take a Day Trip to Lake Woebegone." Ernest "Sparky" Hemingway, a 50-ish copyeditor living in Hardwoods, N.Dak., gets a call from the teenage daughter of his Vietnam buddy George "Prez" Washington (an officer with a strange sense of humor put them both in the same tank crew, along with a guy called Doc Holliday). Seems that Prez, a Minneapolis pharmacist, has been killed by some of that city's burgeoning crew of gangbangers and left instructions that Hemingway and/or Holliday (now practicing medicine in Indianapolis) were to be called to look after daughter Tenisha in the event of his death. After both Sparky and Doc rush to Minneapolis and anger a large number of gangstas and local cops, Sparky takes the scared, shy, sullen Tenisha home to Hardwoods, where the locals are astonished to find an urban black teenager in their midst. An FBI agent with a Vietnamese face and a Norwegian last name shows up, making mysterious noises about Prez and his daughter; then four young black males are found dead in a car not far from Hardwoods. Rosenberg's plotting has some intriguing twists, and his portrait of Sparky as a man smarter and tougher than he looks is interesting, but the disparate elements never quite gel into an exciting or entertaining whole.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This is the first mystery from accomplished fantasy novelist Rosenberg. Ernest "Sparky" Hemingway is a copy editor, growing older and wearier by the day. When the daughter of old Vietnam buddy George Washington asks him to help her out of a tricky situation, he decides, somewhat unenthusiastically, to give it a shot. Teaming up with his ol' pal Doc Holliday, Sparky sets off from his comfy North Dakota home to the big, bad city of Minneapolis on his reluctant rescue mission. This is the first in a projected series of Sparky Hemingway novels, and if the series is to flourish, the author needs to make a few changes. The people-with-famous-names gimmick is tiresome; the first-person narration (by Hemingway) is wearisome; and one of the story's central plot points--the color of Tenishia Washington's skin--is handled in a manner that some readers might find distasteful. Still, Rosenberg has a sound premise (the aging-copy-editor-turned-sleuth), and readers looking for something offbeat may enjoy the story.
David PittCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
