Dead Birds Book

Jimmy Jenner is a private detective with a limp in his foot and a chip on his shoulder. Injured in a bomb attack while on duty, he was forced to take early retirement from his beloved police force and now scrapes together a living by finding the odd missing person and serving the occasional writ for solicitors. Like all private dicks his ambition is to work on a murder case, and as luck would have it one soon comes his way in the shape of the dead body of Alison Duncan, wife of East End boxer George Duncan. The gruesome facial disfigurement of the body leads Jenner to suspect that the body is not that of Alison at all, and suddenly he's in the middle of a dodgy East End racket, tough-talking his way through the shady underside of society in his quest to find the truth. Its all very Philip Marlowe, but without the wit, and for die-hard detective-fiction fans Milne has clumsily borrowed too much from Chandler for this novel to be anything more than a pale imitation. It is still a good read however, even if the prose sometimes struggles too hard to express the cynicsm of Jenner's world view, and at least the plot will keep you genuinely guessing until nearly the last page.Read More