Mulholland Dive is a trio of short crime stories by Michael Connelly, none of which were particularly standout. Besides the genre and the lack of quality, the other commonality between them is the twist ending.
Cahoots is about an illegal poker game where some of the players figure out they’re being cheated by two of the players - but who’s really cheating who? Mulholland Dive is about a detective investigating a fatal car accident on LA’s Mulholland Drive - or is he? Two-Bagger is about a pair of cops tailing a recently released inmate who they think is going to murder an enemy of someone inside - but who’s the real target?
Of the three, the title story’s twist ending was the only one I liked - it’s very clever, ironic even, with a great visual ending the pun title alludes to. Otherwise Mulholland Dive is a very dull procedural story for the most part as we find out, whether we wanted to or not (for me, not), how a car accident is reconstructed. The other two stories are similar in that nothing really happens until the ending.
And that’s the real weakness of these stories: they seem to exist to take up space for Connelly to give the reader the ending. It’s like he conceived the ending first and then put together the necessary preamble to lead up to it without much effort going into making that part entertaining.
Michael Connelly’s written some good short fiction but Mulholland Dive ain’t among them. I suggest checking out The Safe Man instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment