Life is Never Dull in this Milan Jacovich Mystery
Reviewed by Laura Kennelly
Les Roberts offers up another delicious slice of Northeast Ohio life in his 16th Milan Jacovich Mystery, Whiskey Island. Veteran private investigator Jacovich sounds weary as the book opens: “I think I’ve lived long enough to figure it out: Everybody is in one way or another corrupt.” He doesn’t find anything as the story progresses to make him change that opinion.
He’s got a new side-kick — feisty young Kevin (or K.O.) O’Bannion who saved his life (in The Cleveland Creep). The two have barely settled into the office when, bam! before you know it, in classic detective style, trouble walks in the door. Only this time it’s not a gorgeous dame who needs help; it’s creepy Cleveland councilman Bert Loftus who thinks someone wants to kill him before the Feds finish using him as a songbird.
As the story moves along we see the trouble goes way beyond a mere greedy councilman or the kinky side of sex for favors. The situations and types are (alas) familiar to anyone who knows the Plain Dealer stories about corruption in the old Cuyahoga County government.
It’s kinda fun to say, “Let’s see, that might be ‘XXX’ (it likely is) or ‘YYY’ (yep, right again).” But I’d also advise not annoying Roberts because he’s got the power to poke gentle fun at local figures who seem to have bugged him. (But we’re friends, right, Les? Love your series; read all of them.)
Local geography plays a big role (and was this reader’s favorite part) in the saga. Whiskey Island (or rather a club located there) plays a part, but so does The Harp, the Cleveland Zoo, the Cleveland Public Library, some fancy apartments right by the Cuyahoga River, and dozens of familiar spots. Our detectives take us all over the city, introduce us to interesting local characters (including their own love interests — two unusual women), but the star of the story is Cleveland. The mirror Roberts holds up shows a city full of beauty, quirks, and eccentrics. As Milan says at story’s end: “Life is never dull in Cleveland.”
Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.