Lisa Sandlin

I was a big fan of the first book in this series, The Do-Right, so I was thrilled to get an opportunity to read and review the follow-up novel. It is not necessary to have read the first book to enjoy this one, but if you do, The Bird Boys begins right after the other one ends, with the main characters, Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan, dealing both physically and emotionally with the fall-out of a crime.

Delpha Wade is a wonderfully well-drawn character, and her personality shines through in both novels. She has been recently released from a long prison term after killing a man in self-defense who was assaulting her when she was 18 years old. But the prison experience has shaped the person she is today: strong, organized, determined; someone who doesn't suffer fools gladly.

Tom Phelan is a Vietnam vet and is struggling to get his P.I. business off the ground. He feels a growing attachment to Delpha, but is very aware of how badly she has suffered in the past and is gentle with her, which I admired. The two cases the main characters investigate are interesting, and you really see the reality of what it must be like working as a private investigator.

The novel's setting is in Beaumont, Texas in 1973, and the author has done an excellent job of characterizing this town, which is located not far from Houston. The era of the book is interesting to read about since there were no computers, cell phones, or other technology that we are used to seeing in contemporary mysteries. This means that the work done by a private investigator is a lot more complicated and slow. The author also was careful, and successful, in getting the historical references right, including, for example, the mentions of Watergate, Hurricane Celia, the use of a Selectric typewriter, the Bobby Riggs/Bill Jean King tennis exhibition, and the $1.60 cent minimum wage.

The writing is something special. The author's sentence structure, which is short, and not always complete, really drives the narrative and gives a unique cadence to the reading experience, as in this paragraph toward the end of the book:

"....he hoped the phone was still in working order. He got out and tried it. Dial tone, all right. Hung it up and leaned against the wall, waited. The breeze mild, pleasant. Clouds on the moon. The station's orange security lamp stained the leafy underside of the nearest tree an orangey-brown. Weird effect."

For me, the pace really slowed down in the middle of the book as Tom and Delpha each investigate the two mysteries they are trying to solve. The description of the process of uncovering the clues says a lot about how tedious most P.I. work probably is, but this is not so great for a narrative that you want to keep moving. That being said, I never wanted to stop reading this noirish tale at any point, and was hungry to find out the solution to the mysteries.

One of my favorite things about the book, hands-down, is that the author has dedicated her novel to "librarians everywhere," and she incorporates libraries and librarians into the novel in a very positive way. Overall, I enjoyed The Bird Boys and would recommend this series to those who like mysteries with intriguing characters, a slower pace, and an unusual setting of time and place.
… (altro)

Lisa Sandlin has hit a homerun with her debut, The Do-Right, a full-length novel based on her short-story, “Phelan’s First Case.” Tom Phelan is a brand new PI working in a Texas port city during the Watergate era of the 1970’s who hires a recently released female parolee named Delpha Wade to work as his assistant. Tom is a Vietnam veteran who a hangs out his shingle as a private detective after losing a finger in an oil rig accident. He does a favor for a probation officer friend by hiring Delpha, recently released from a women’s correctional facility after serving fourteen years for killing one of the two men who raped her. Both Tom and Delpha are narrators of this tale in which a variety of unusual cases (and characters) cross their doorstep, including a betrayed wife (or is she?), a missing prosthetic leg, an inheritance mystery, and an ultimately satisfying resolution to Delpha’s tragic history. Sandlin does a great job of gradually weaving the history of her protagonists’ lives throughout the story and how those histories affect their cases. The author, a Beaumont, Texas native, has an ear for southern dialogue, especially in the uneducated Delpha – but Delpha’s lack of education is not indicative of her intelligence or her street smarts, the latter honed by her years in prison. Here’s hoping we’ll see more of Tom, Delpha and new cases for Phelan Investigations! (Warning: some fairly graphic intimacy is described in parts of the novel).… (altro)