The Goldfish Bowl by Laurence Gough (1987).
One
of those, tough, entertaining thrillers from 80’s that nobody knows.
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layers. – Jack Willow. Main
man. Man with a cold demeanor and little words. Kind of like DIRTY HARRY
without a 357 magnum.
Hell of a talented cop, according
to his boss, but time to time, forget to work as a team.
Claire Parker. Willow’s new partner. Old one is out with
sickness.
A cute 28 yrs rookie with
intelligence and style. Just what every 80’s mystery needs: beauty with brain
and a bit of an attitude.
David Ulysses Atkinson. Homicide
detective. Short but well-dressed and well-built.
Arrogant, cocky, always trying to
impress/pick up girls.
George Franklin. Dave’s partner. Really big
(fat) guy with a mild temper.
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lace. – The rainy city of Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada.
Because his story is grim, the
city featured in this book is wet and dark, too. Vancouver
is supposed to be one of the most beautiful cities in Canada when it’s not raining. Then
again, it always rains in this city.
Sine it’s still 80’s, Vancouver is not a big
city, yet. Now, it’s third densest city in the world after Hong Kong and Tokyo. And the police
force is still not as big as now a day, neither.
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lot. –A killer (man) dressed up like a woman with a
red lip stick, thick make-up, blond wig and race trimmed dress, kills a couple
of seemingly unrelated victims. Then a cop is shot to death during the
investigation. From there, the killer starts a killing rampage blowing away one
by one with 45mm Winchester
(which is a ridiculously big gun), right in the middle of the city!!
Inevitably, the city is in panic,
the police department is under tremendous pressure, and the cops are
frantically looking for a crew to find the killer.
It is pretty tight setting with
lots of possibility. But the book’s total volume (mere 186 pages) is not long
enough to develop all the characters and properly explore their relationships,
giving you an impression that it just ends abruptly. Another word, this book could be a much much better mystery if it has little more space. Too bad.
Still,
I’ve read books much worst than this one and this book is not
a bad mystery, actually.
Also, at the very last chapter, there is a BIG SURPRISE which I couldn't even imagine. Mainly because there are no indications what so ever of a true identity of killer. When the killer is finally revealed, it takes me a moment to figure out what is going on which is good thing (a HUGE surprise)? or bad thing ( Lack of hints. It just comes from nowhere!!)? Kinda hard to tell. I personally like mysteries which hide hints everywhere throughout the story line so that I can somehow deduce the bad guy before the ending. But this one is NOT that kind of book, I guess.
Also, at the very last chapter, there is a BIG SURPRISE which I couldn't even imagine. Mainly because there are no indications what so ever of a true identity of killer. When the killer is finally revealed, it takes me a moment to figure out what is going on which is good thing (a HUGE surprise)? or bad thing ( Lack of hints. It just comes from nowhere!!)? Kinda hard to tell. I personally like mysteries which hide hints everywhere throughout the story line so that I can somehow deduce the bad guy before the ending. But this one is NOT that kind of book, I guess.
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erdict. – There is nothing new or
strange here. However, Laurence Gough manages to create a detective story with
grit and enough suspense to make this a quite entertaining book.
This book is good but not good
enough to receive “Spencer”-kind of attention (80's true hero of private detectives).
Totally worth your time if you
can somehow find it. (second hand book store, I think.) It doesn’t really
stands out from whole bunch of 80’s good writers but still holds its own pretty
good. That’s it.
