IN HIS SHADOW
Dave Zeltserman
iUniverse
Mystery
ISBN: 0595210848

One of the great benefits of having friends who read is that there is a tremendous give and take of book recommendations. Sometimes you're thrusting books into their hands, other times they're thrusting books into yours. And being the "thruster" is equally enjoyable to being the "thrustee." This, of course, is true of other activities as well, but that is a topic for another place and another time. In any event, one of my best and longest running friendships resulted in my holding a copy of IN HIS SHADOW by Dave Zeltserman up to the light and reading it in one sitting. This is one book that cannot be put down, in any sense of the term.

Zeltserman has studied at the knee of Jim Thompson. It is an influence that he freely and graciously acknowledges at the beginning of IN HIS SHADOW, but it would be obvious in any event. Zeltserman though does not attempt a slavish imitation or pastiche of Thompson here. Rather, he takes the basic building blocks that Thompson used so often and so well and adds another room to the house, if you will.

IN HIS SHADOW concerns Johnny Lane, a private investigator who has his own newspaper column and a boatload of secrets. Lane is not the rumpled knight in tarnished armor that Archer, The Continental Op, or Marlowe wore. He seems to be cut from that cloth, at least at first, when he is retained by a young woman named Mary Williams to locate her birth parents. Zeltserman sets his readers up quite well; Lane is not your typical private eye of detective fiction. It's more than the fact that he's not a nice guy; he's a bad, bad man. The reader has no idea how bad of a guy he actually is until IN HIS SHADOW methodically unfolds and Lane's investigation begins to take him places that he wishes it had not. The reader learns how Lane conducts his business, treats his clients and lives his life. This is a guy who is corrupt and Zeltserman expertly peels off the layers of that corruption to reveal the depths of it below. He also, along the way, breaks a taboo. Yet, as shocking as IN HIS SHADOW is in places, Zeltserman never uses sex or violence gratuitously, but only as a plot vehicle to move things along toward their inevitable conclusion as Lane's recent and remote past begins to catch up with him.

IN HIS SHADOW has found a European publisher and Zeltserman may be poised to become a household name abroad before finding fame here. However, if IN HIS SHADOW is any indication of the depth of his talent, he will not labor in obscurity for long.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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