Manhattan is My Beat (book review)

Reviews of the books I read on vacation, continued.
Manhattan Is My Beat
Jeffrey Deaver

A slick little mystery set in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Full of iconic 80s touches, from Rune, the protagonist’s fading dyed hair, to the video store where she works (that rents VHS and Beta videos) to other small touches about characters’ appearances- a stroke of green eye shadow here, leather there. Rune is barely 20, prone to rootlessness and vivid imagination. She’s also good at the Holden Caulfield aimless intellectual whine. She goes to an older gent’s apartment, to pick up a video he’s returning, and finds him murdered, shot dead in his easy chair. Convinced that his favorite rental, a black and white true crime story from the 40′s, holds the key to his death, Rune tries to solve the mystery. Along the way, she, and those she meets become endangered. Fast paced, and definitely gritty (some of the descriptions of the murder scene, and New York streets had me wincing) Deaver builds a definite sense of Rune’s dangerous path. She’s closed in on every side, not sure who to trust. And the reader has an excellently unreliable narrator, swayed by her fairy-tale infused patter into not being sure how much to believe, how much she’s actually plugged into reality or might be outright delusional.

I’m starting to wonder whether Deaver’s appeal as a writer might be mostly in his gimmicks. (Lincoln Rhyme, quadriplegic forensic investigator, anyone? They might be good mysteries, but they hang on their gimmick.) But this protagonist, this setup returning Rune’s analogies and passions to movies and fairy tales, doesn’t feel all that surprising or innovative. Organized crime and NYC grime- there are more dated details than New Wave haircuts and rewinding videos. Naming his protagonist Rune, and having her reluctant to reveal her real name is coy, but not very original. Maybe this book hasn’t aged well since its first publication. “Manhattan is My Beat” was not my cup of tea.