The Cleanup


THE CLEANUP hit a lot of Top Ten lists this past year. And I mean A LOT. In every mystery mag I read, I saw Doolittle's name up for an award or a favorable ranking. With such overwhelming popularity, I decided Sean Doolittle was next on my personal reading list, and the book from his catalogue to be examined and enjoyed would be the much-touted CLEANUP. So I slapped $5.99 across the palm of my local bookseller and looked forward to THE CLEANUP wiping the floor with me. The result? An inflated caper that should've been a short story. Not that CLEANUP wasn't fun or engaging; on the contrary, Doolittle's prose is quick and clever and reminds noir fans of the classic pulp writers. The characters are sympathetic and well-drawn, the dialogue sharp, the action believable, and the caper itself is twisty and turny with a high dose of suspense. The ending is crash-bang, like a volcano that has built for centuries and has finally erupted, and the resolution is bitter as much as it's sweet. It truly is a modern-day noir mystery, as if Doolittle reached back in time to the `50's and pulled out a lost gem from the desk of Hammett. That said, CLEANUP had 10-pounds of manure stuffed into a 5-pound bag. At 270 pages, it's already "short" for most novel-length stories, yet so many scenes are unnecessary or stretched beyond their usefulness that I got the impression Doolittle included them only because they were fun and they got him to a good novel length. Don't get me wrong: Every scene in the book is enjoyable reading because it's so well written. But relevant to the plot or story? Not so much. It's too bad Doolittle didn't perform a little extra "clean up" on this book as it would have rocked as a short story or novella. In the end, however, rest assured that THE CLEANUP makes for a contemporary noir novel that's a breezy and fun read.

My favorites books © 2008 Por *Templates para Você*