Better than pulp fiction, close to noir, maybe with a touch of Chandleresque thrown in for good measure ... As with all good thrillers, at the end, Last Dance throws out all the red herrings, ties up the loose ends, and sets the story for the next in the Sam Carver series. Fleishman’s writing style is reminiscent of the 1940s style of the likes of Raymond Chandler, and yet Fleishman seems to take it one step further. The story is alive; it breathes; every paragraph brings the reader a sense of being there, of being Carver. Fleishman’s writing in the first person ensures that the reader is always in Carver’s mind.
I believe a more apt title for this novel would have been—Cold War Reboot. This is due to the fact that the narrative and style applied by the author make the reader feel like they could be back in the 1960s. In fact, one of the characters drives a classic car that still has an 8-track player for the sole reason of feeling like he is back in the ’60s when riding around modern-day Los Angeles ... Fleishman has created something special with his latest release ... almost as if Raymond Chandler and John Le Carre had a baby. The writing is so descriptive and snappy it seems to just jump off the page at you as the story continues to twist and suspense keeps mounting ... ike a trip down memory lane. Time spent in modern-day LA with the feel of an old black-and-white Hollywood crime film. The mystery of the missing body will keep you guessing right up until the end and the finale of the story opens the door to Sam Carver’s past and will have you pining for the next title in this series.
Better than pulp fiction, close to noir, maybe with a touch of Chandleresque thrown in for good measure ... As with all good thrillers, at the end, Last Dance throws out all the red herrings, ties up the loose ends, and sets the story for the next in the Sam Carver series ... Fleishman’s writing style is reminiscent of the 1940s style of the likes of Raymond Chandler, and yet Fleishman seems to take it one step further. The story is alive; it breathes; every paragraph brings the reader a sense of being there, of being Carver. Fleishman’s writing in the first person ensures that the reader is always in Carver’s mind.
A more somber tale, Jeffrey Fleishman’s Last Dance, opens with the apparent overdose in Los Angeles of Katrina Ivanovna, a famed Russian ballerina ... Carver is a complex, laconic, melancholy figure, and Fleishman — a veteran correspondent and the foreign and national editor at the Los Angeles Times — paints him in nuanced detail and lovely prose. Equally well evoked is the city itself.
The Russian ballerina is dead in her L.A. loft, 'pale and light as shaved ice' ... Whether readers find this a striking turn of phrase, or just peculiar, will be the key to their reaction to this ambitious novel. The inflated language—he showers 'to baptize myself for a new day'—ornaments Carver’s attempts to learn more about the dead woman ... Even readers not enamored of the language—'the indelible lie of beauty'—will find plenty to enjoy in the engaging plot.
... impressive ... Fleishman nicely evokes Los Angeles ... A hard-boiled, world-weary hero in the classic tradition of Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, Carver will also appeal to fans of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch. Fleishman is on his way to becoming a master of contemporary L.A. noir.
The detective on the case, the LAPD’s Sam Carver, talks a great game, alternating between laconic dialogue and appealingly quotable reflections as he fights off his memories of Dylan Cross, the woman who escaped after taking him prisoner and confessing that she’d killed two men who’d raped her. But neither Carver nor his creator ever weaves together all the busy lines of the episodic plot[.]
