Black Dog - Hardcover

Chicago homicide detective Jimmy Parisi must contend with his own depression as well as a serial killer nicknamed the Count (so called for his habit of draining his female victims' blood) in British author Laird's third mystery thriller (after 2001's Cutter and 2003's Season of the Assassins). The "low-profile" murder of an elderly inner-city resident adds complications. Laird knows how to jack up the suspense, but seasoned crime fans may sense that the author is writing less from the heart or the gut than from a steady diet of other American noir mysteries. Parisi's family life has decided overtones of other cop series: his wife Natalie, aka Red, has to cope with the undoubtedly real but hardly original problems of a homicide detective's mid-life burnout. "Red had spied the black dog running loose in our household, and she refused to let that dark canine feast on my self-pity and depression," Jimmy says at one point, a comment that epitomizes the novel's melodramatic, even mocking tone. Laird's two previous Jimmy Parisi novels have earned him a certain level of critical and reader esteem, and his latest, despite its lack of originality, might well continue the trend.
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