A first look at The Second Girl by David Swinson

David Swinson

My first post-Bouchercon reading, David Swinson's The Second Girl, takes every cop-turned-P.I. trope you can think of and turns it on its head.

Swinson's protagonist is a former Washington, D.C., cop named Frank Marr, but Marr does not bristle with hatred for the FBI officers with whom he must work.  He drinks too much and indulges to excess in a range of drugs, but he does not not wallow in self-pity over this. He commits other crimes and misdeeds, but Swinson portrays these neither as adventures not as self-laceratng hell trips; they're just what Marr does.

Swinson doesn't get in the reader's face with his character's damaged quirkiness, either.  His revelations of plot and character are gradual until, not so many chapters in, the reader is apt to be hooked without knowing it.

He does something similar with the narrative. The second girl of the title is a young woman whose parents hire Marr after their daughter falls in with drug-dealing lowlifes. There's also a first girl, Marr's recovery of whom is a bracingly rapid surprise that kicks the larger narrative into gear.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015