Book Review: The Holy City Murders by Ron Plante Jr.
Duke Dempsey might live in Charleston, South Carolina, which likes to tout itself as the “Holy City”, but he’s not particularly interested in religion, or the many churches and temples that dot the landscape. He’s much more focused on bourbon and keeping his private investigation office open. So it’s a bit of a surprise when a nun representing the Vatican wants to hire him to find a missing relic.
This is pretty obviously connected to the case being investigated by police detective Johnny Stampkin, Duke’s former partner. A Roman Catholic priest and an off-duty police officer were violently murdered on the Charleston docks in the middle of the night. Most likely, this involved the missing relic supposedly on the nearby ship, but who killed them, and where is the relic now?
Dempsey and Stampkin will have to join forces to take down the killer and find the artifact, but as the bodies pile up, will the Holy City be drowned in sinful blood?
There’s not a lot of actual mystery in this mystery, as we meet the murderer in the first chapter. Making the killer both a Nazi and a fanatical Catholic is an interesting choice, but not entirely untrue to history. There’s also some good puzzle work involving Catholic and Civil War trivia, and the climactic fight scene shows the writer at his most involved.
That said, this book is a prime example of why self-published authors need to hire good editors. For starters, there’s the sloppy proofreading. Misplaced punctuation, clumsy grammar, missing words, spellchecker typos…all of these made the story a chore to read. And having to parse this mess only made the book’s other flaws more obvious.
There’s far too much telling rather than showing in regards to characterization. Duke’s a walking cliche of a private eye, and the romantic subplot is sadly unconvincing.
If the proofreading were up to snuff, I could recommend this as a fun junk read, but as is I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Booksirens for the purpose of reading it and writing a review. No other compensation was offered or requested.
