Daniel Pyne

Catalina Eddy (2017) by Daniel Pyne. This is a brilliant crime novel told in three novellas. They are set in three different settings about 20 years apart with different casts of characters. All are set in Southern California.
Part 1: The Big Empty, June 1954. The big news of the day is the H-Bomb test on Bikini Island. Rylan Lovely, an L.A. private eye gets a message from a woman to meet with her about a possible case. But when he gets to her apartment he finds a dead woman and a couple of cops waiting for him. The cops know he didn’t do the crime, but then they didn’t know the dead woman was Lovely’s estranged wife. He and her had been apart for seven years.
The following story involves a preacher for a new-age Cosmic Church and a rocket scientist who likes to get rough with his dates. Lovely’s wife worked for the first and was mixed up with the second, but Lovely’s investigation is hindered by the appearance of federal agents trying to protect the scientist and willing to give up the wife as a scapegoat for several other crimes along the way.
This is a salute to the hard-boiled genre popular in the 40’s and 50’s and plays true to it throughout. It turns out Lovely has a lot more in his history than just being a WWII vet, including involvement in OSS operations and other clandestine work.
And keep an eye out for his lighter.
Part 2: Losertown, June 1987. The Feds and San Diego’s prosecutor’s office are reacting to the Reagan White House’s demands for the “War on Drugs”. Rolling busts are the tool being used. A series of small crimes leading rapidly up the supply chain to net the bigger fish, all in a night’s work. Sounds easy on paper, but the reality is moer of a long slog with unseen complications along the way. When an Egyptian, a “possible” drug dealer, is pulled in, he gives up his supplier. He is all too happy to tell the cops whatever they want to hear, be it the truth or not. He names Nick “Stix” Mahrez, a one time drug dealer, gone straight years before.
The new U.S. Prosecutor wants him and is pushing hard on the lead prosecutor, Gil Kirby. He is forced by her to do deals which he, and any sane D.A., would never do, but the White House demands results, no matter what. And the good intentions of the people of the U.S. are cast aside, bargains are broken, the laws are stretched, all in the name of results.
Part 3: Portuguese Bend, June 2016. Finn is an introverted crime scene photographer with something of a photographic memory when it comes to his work. One night in a cop bar, Finn witnesses sees Riley, an attractive woman who is having a bad break-up with her boy friend, a police detective. Finn, despite all odds, somehow manages to go and talk with her. For whatever her own reasons, she goes home with him. There in his apartment/photographic studio and photo display area, she becomes wrapped up in the latest crime scene photos. They show a young woman who has just killed her husband.
Riley, in reality an undercover cop, sees the photos as evidence that the woman, Willa Ko, did not shoot the husband.
As the story develops we see how Riley’s on-going investigation gets tied to the murder, how her ex-boyfriend and his detective partner play a big roll in the situation, and finally how Finn manages to make some sense of the crime and his life.
These three tales have subtle connections, strings which thread them together but are mere background detail, never overpowering the plots. The book is well crafted with three different styles of telling. These strongly defined characters some to life in the best possible manner.
And the title refers to a swirling frontal weather patter that sets into SoCal almost every June. It brings in depression, mood swings, and mayhem. It is not some slick dude who rides in a pimped caddy and has a gold display tooth, despite what I was thinking when I picked up the book.
Catalina Eddy is far better than it has any right to be, and I can’t recommend it enough.… (altro)

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Water Memory by Daniel Pyne is a thriller following Aubrey Sentro, a black ops specialist, with brain damage, trying to survive a pirate attack on a ship, while contemplating her life, motherhood, and career. Mr. Pyne is an author, educator and screenwriter who currently lives in Los Angeles.

Aubrey Sentro knows something is wrong. Her brain is not working right, she keeps forgetting names of people she works with, events and appointments. A lifetime risking her life as a spy is taking its toll.

Aubrey’s husband is dead, and her kids see her as a bad mom, which she was, but don’t know the reasons. She decides to take a vacation and ends up on a freight ship which gets hijacked by pirates.

I’m a sucker for espionage books, as a bonus my wife wanted to read this book as well. Water Memory by Daniel Pyne, however, is more of a black-ops story for the middle-age folks who can relate to the struggles of Aubrey Sentro, while piling on top outrageous events with twists around every corner.

The protagonist of the book is a widow, mother, as well as a combat veteran (did they have women in combat 30 years ago?). She is now working for a company specializing in ransom/rescue efforts. Aubrey’s memory is damaged from a lifetime of physical abuse because of her work. Subsequently she hides that from her co-workers and family, a family, by the way, who doesn’t know what she’s been doing for a living the past few decades.

Aside from these very unlikely scenarios, Water Memory by Daniel Pyne works very well. The confusion and frustration Ms. Sentro feels when her brain fails her is, sadly, starting to be familiar. The actions sequences are very well written, suspenseful, and as I mentioned, twists and turns galore. The narrative is not fast paced, however there is a lot of inner monologue, very descriptive language, and flashbacks which certainly flesh out the story, which I found sometimes helpful, sometimes distracting. I don’t think the marketing for this book did it justice by promising a fast-paced story.

The book is marketed as first of a series (Aubrey Sentro #1), so I wonder where the author will go from here since Ms. Sentro’s secrets are now out in the open.… (altro)

Water Memory is just the sort of book to turn any reader off freighter cruises. True, they do supply the leisurely cruise without the bling and crowds of the behemoth cruise ships of companies like Carnival or Princess or Royal Caribbean, but freighters are more likely to be boarded by pirates. In fact, one of the things I found interesting in Daniel Pyne's thriller is that there seems to be an entire thriving business around hijacked cargo ships.

The first third of Water Memory is a bit clunky as the author explores Aubrey Sentro's relationship with her children as well as the workings of Aubrey's mind. Persistent post-concussion syndrome means headaches, aural distortions, mood swings, and memory problems among other things, and watching Aubrey experience these things can be painful because she is a talented black-ops specialist who enjoys what she does ("international risk mitigation") and she's extremely good at it. Having her mind betray her is going to put paid on the life she loves.

Not having told her children Jeremy and Jenny what she really does for a living has caused problems. Both grew up with a stay-at-home father and the idea that Aubrey couldn't be bothered to spend any time with them like "real mothers" do. In fact, it's warped Jenny so much that I got tired of her whining about how she's never had the mother she deserved. (Big girl panties, Jenny. Big girl panties.) Pyne's description of mother and daughter-- "two peeves in a pod"-- made me laugh and stayed in my mind just like the author hoped it would.

Once the first third of the book, the setup, is done and the pirates have taken control of the ship, the pace picks up. This is where I really became engrossed in the story. I learned why Aubrey chose this unusual work for herself. I learned to appreciate characters like Morehouse the doctor and little Zoala who might be playing in the Cricket World Cup one day. I also appreciated what Pyne has to say about women who don't do what's expected of them.

I loved watching Aubrey at work as she tried to save everyone aboard the cargo ship. I loved Zoala. Those two caused me to break out in fist pumps more than once. And I loved the little twist at the end of Water Memory. Evidently, there's supposed to be a follow-up book in the "Aubrey Sentro series." As much as I enjoyed this story, I'm not interested in reading any further. Some characters are absolute perfection in one book and one book only. I think Aubrey Sentro is one of them.… (altro)