Gone to Dust by Matt Goldman

Gone to DustGone to Dust by Matt Goldman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author is a short, Jewish Hollywood scriptwriter, and the style shows it. The private eye cum hero Nils Shapiro is a short Jewish guy (sound familiar?) in Minnesota for whom all the gorgeous women fall head over heels; or, at least they want to jump in bed with him. He’s a smart alecky rule-breaker who violates a number of search and seizure laws with never a consequence. The dialogue contains a healthy dose of clever and entertaining banter, although of course no one could get away with all that smarm and insultery in real life. The local, small-town police hire Shapiro to assist in a murder case since he has experience with such cases from his prior police work in Minneapolis. The title refers to the sneaky method the killer used to conceal his or her identity. The victim’s house is covered in dust, more specifically, the contents of vacuum cleaner bags in vast quantity. Supposedly, this meant the killer is very very smart since now there is DNA from hundreds of people throughout the house. In reality, and even in the book, this instead narrows the field of possible suspects to very few.

The pace is pretty good, the dialogue is quite good, and the plot is almost reasonable. It’s not Harry Bosch or Sherlock Holmes, but it was entertaining enough for me. There were plenty of logical shortcomings, but they’re forgivable. My biggest objection is the typical Hollywood portrayal of the FBI as nasty, arrogant, and incompetent. That was gratuitous as it wasn’t necessary or even important to the plot. It merely gave Shapiro a chance to make fun of the agents with his rapier wit. That’s another thing I could have done without – there are more than a few insults based on physical appearance such as fat-shaming the women and referring to people with nicknames based on some unattractive physical feature.

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