The Devil's Only Friend: Mitchell Bartoy

In the wake of Detroits '43 race riots, Pete Caudill quits his job as detective and crawls into a bottle. A colored friend named Walker contacts Caudill to help find his sister's killer. Pete steps up to the plate in renewing an association with Jasper Lloyd, owner of Lloyds Motors, at whose factories women are turning up mutilated. Standing in his way are Jasper's son, and the men who want to force the Lloyds out.

While the backdrop for this story is amazingly realistic for the era, the plot is dry and boring. I had to force myself to follow this gumshoe's stumbling, bumbling attempts at being a detective. The characters are hollow and not well rounded. While Pete's deformities where probably meant to cause empathy, they were mentioned atleast once per page after the first chapter. It did nothing for the story and I kept thinking, Ok, I get the point already,. There are vague references to a dead partner -- and something about his father -- but these interesting tidbits were never expounded upon, and I can see no reason for bothering with it at all other then as a space waster.

If you are looking for a good detective novel, head in the other direction.
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Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur (October 17, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0312340893
ISBN-13: 978-0312340896
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