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eBook The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries) download

by John Shannon

ISBN: 1605980366
Author: John Shannon
Publisher: Pegasus Books (April 7, 2009)
Language: English
Pages: 320
ePub: 1752 kb
Fb2: 1290 kb
Rating: 4.2
Other formats: doc azw txt lit
Category: Mystery
Subcategory: Mystery

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The Devils of Bakersfield book. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Start by marking The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery as Want to Read: Want to Read savin. ant to Read.

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John Shannon (born 1943) is a contemporary American author, lately of detective fiction. He cites as his literary influences Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Graham Greene, Robert Stone and Jim Harrison. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Shannon moved with his family to San Pedro, the gritty harbor district of Los Angeles, California, when he was five

created by john shannon. Jack Liffey is a walking conscience, a bruised crusader who remains an unerring advocate of doing things the hard way and on behalf of the little gu.

created by john shannon.

The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries). This is my first John Shannon, Jack Liffey Mystery and this is not a good entry point to the Jack Liffey series. The Chinese Beverly Hills (A Jack Liffey) (Volume 14). John Shannon. Terminal Island: A Jack Liffey Mystery. Dangerous Games: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries). The protagonist and the locale show promise; but, my gripe is with style. The narrative is an ephemeral hash of alternating voices.

Liffey, Jack (Fictitious character), Nuclear terrorism, Detective and mystery stories. An Otto Penzler book. New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers.

Dangerous Games A Jack Liffey Mystery Jack Liffey Mysteries.

When Jack Liffey and his daughter Maeve end up in Bakersfield as a respite from . product description page.

When Jack Liffey and his daughter Maeve end up in Bakersfield as a respite from their life in Los Angeles, they find that the town has cast its paranoid fears on a group of rebellious teenage girls alleged to be Satanists. As hysteria mounts, there is a mammoth book burning and a police raid on all people they deem unsympathetic to their evangelical cause. In the chaos, Maeve disappears-and Jack is racing against the clock to find her and save the girls from the town's "exorcism. The Devils of Bakersfield - (Jack Liffey Mysteries) by John Shannon (Hardcover).

The Devils of Bakersfield · John Shannon · ex Pegasus 2008. Thrilling Mystery started as a weird menace title in reaction to the success of titles like Dime Mystery Magazine and Terror Tales. Thrilling Detective (online) (Full Text). By the 1940s it had started a gradual shift to more conventional mysteries, becoming a character pulp in September 1942 when the Green Ghost novels were shifted into it.

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The seemingly sleepy oil town of Bakersfield has a long and grim history of hostility towards outsiders, be it the “Okies” during the Depression, African-Americans, or labor organizes. When Jack Liffey and his daughter Maeve end up in Bakersfield as a respite from their life in Los Angeles, they find that the town has cast its paranoid fears on a group of rebellious teenaged girls alleged to be Satanists. As hysteria mounts, there is a mammoth book burning and a police raid on all people they deem unsympathetic to their evangelical cause. In the chaos, Maeve disappears and Jack is racing against the clock to find her and save the girls from the town’s “exorcism.”

Comments: (7)

Weernis

I just do not understand the bad reviews. For me, this was a real literary achievement and a damn good read. Perhaps the reviewers didn't enjoy the fundamentalist characters and plot. Folks, that's the way it is in Bakersfield. The historical fragments, signs from past eras, and newspaper clippings make clear the plot of the novel is only waiting to happen again. Colorful supporting characters and the subplot of Jack's daughter making up her mind about an unwanted pregnancy added poignant layers to the story.

Read this one for yourself. Don't be influenced by a few bad reviews. John Shannon is a superb writer and social commentator.

September

After the first three books I read by John Shannon (long after publication) in anticipation I bought the rest of his novels and each has gotten progressively worse. I couldn't even finish this one.

Whitescar

First off, this is my first Jack Liffey mystery and one of only a handful of books that I have read of its genre. I picked up the book because I saw that it was set in Bakersfield, the city where I grew up, and because the author was going to be speaking at a bookstore near where I live now.

The book is a quick, fun read. While it has some slow parts, it is generally fast-moving and entertaining, never tedious. The author throws in some literary references here and there which are fun to spot and think about, but in general the book reads more like genre fiction. Sometimes the author delves into deeper issues and hits the reader over the head with them. He and, by extension, his protagonist Liffey, could be a bit more subtle. In a few places Liffey seems to make statements that are somewhat obvious--restating what has already happened. This doesn't further the story and sometimes makes it seem as if Shannon is using Liffey to lecture the reader.

Shannon's treatment of Bakersfield is a bit rough-handed, though in many ways its not that far off the mark. I really liked the historical artifacts that he put throughout the book. His use of historical context and fog were very creative and were a highlight of the book. It was fun seeing staples of Bakersfield like the Marketplace, the bluffs, and Oildale in print.

I'm struggling right now to give this book four stars. I think it's more of a 3.5 star book. It's 4 to 5 stars a lot of the way through, but the ending is just plain bad.

Overall, a very readable book that I would recommend to people who read crime noir and anybody who wants to read a book with a lot of the Central Valley in it.

inform

This book is full of action and some humor, and although it seems pretty likely the good guys will come out okay, the exact nature of the resolution is not all that obvious till it's reached. I especially liked the main characters, Jack Liffey and his daughter Maeve and Sergeant Ramirez. I was not aware of the nasty history of intolerance attributable to Bakersfield and environs till reading the historical tidbits scattered throughout the text. This is also one of the few books I've picked up that has an alternative ending.

Bliss

This book is truly awful.

I gave this book two stars because its dialog, when it was not obtuse or disconnected, was not as bad as, say, that of an 11th grade English student. I thank God I got it from a library and only had to pay a small fine because it took so long to read (I would find myself reading three pages and throwing it across the room.)

As for the plot, after reading the book, I am still wondering what it was. There did not seem to be any setup for most of the major events in the story--more like the author sat down to write each day and changed course as whim struck. If something just didn't work, he would leave it in for bulk, and take a new path. In the end, the "hero" finds his daughter, for whom he has been searching, finding, losing, searching, finding, then losing yet again, in a church that is attacked by some unnamed and unexplained group that is somewhere out in a fog (literally, a fog). Then, the police break into the church and save the "hero" from a crazed preacher and the book ends. Poof.

I guess the final blow was that The last short chapter, number 22, was an exact, word-for-word repeat of Chapter 21, except with a different title. If this was some sort of crafty and unprecedented literary artifice, it did not work, unless to underscore the need for a good--no, even a mediocre--editor to get rid of the loose ends, dead plot lines, absence of a unifying theme, and so on.

Siratius

The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Jack Liffey Mysteries)

Gripping novel involving those who believe in a literal devil. After I finished reading this book I was "afraid" to even take I-5 through Bakersfield. Good addition to the Jack Liffey saga.

Arakus

The use of "factoids" were an interesting addition to the Jack Liffey tale -- but do interrupt the flow and apparently annoyed many of the reviewers. If left out, they wouldn't be missed. I read the previous books in this series and enthusiastically recommend them all.

Very interesting and entertaining mystery. And if you think the depiction of what passes for "justice" in Bakersfield is an exaggeration, read Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes' book Mean Justice about DA Ed Jagels and his misuse of power. I live here. It is no distortion.

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