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11/17/2009: "review Powerboat Racer"
Title: Powerboat Racer
Author: Thomas Hollyday
Pub. Address:
Solar Sipper Publishing
In cooperation with Lightning Source Division of Ingram Books
PO Box 86
Weston, MA 02481
ISBN: 0-9741287-4-0 price: $12.95 US copyright 2009, 324 pages
Reviewer: S.A. Gorden, novelist
Powerboat Racer is a fun mystery with a lot of local color. But it suffers from an all too common problem with today's publishing industry. The big publishers only want volume sales or those that fit particular volume niche markets. A simple, but good, mystery just doesn't find a home with the big publishers. This pushes the story into the very small or individual publishing markets. Powerboat Racer … a classic style mystery that is too frequently missing from the bookstores.
Harry Jacobson has just purchased a small local paper in River Sunday Maryland. He has been given a story lead from a local deputy sheriff that an old powerboat has been found, a powerboat belonging to a notorious criminal, Walker John Douglas, on the run for murder and arson. Harry has just stumbled into a thirty year old festering wound of racial politics and greed in the small coastal town. The more he learns about the events thirty years in the past the more threats and danger he uncovers. He is too good a reporter to give up on a great story but the real question is who will survive the eruption of violence that has been held in check by the disappearance of the just discovered powerboat, the Black Duck.
Powerboat Racer is a mystery that brings to life a small town with a hidden past that flows from the Civil War to today. It is the type of cozy mystery that is relatively hard to find today. The rich local color and characters bring into existence a small town that we can't find in our lives today but that we still would like to think exists. .. it is still better than many of the over-plotted contemporary mysteries that are produced by the major publishers. If you are looking for a cozy read during a vacation, Powerboat Racer would be a fine choice.
