Chuck Zito (1) (1959–)

The story kept me guessing until the very end. This is the first book...of course it’s #2...that I have read by this author. I do plan to find book #1 and hope that it is just as good. I really liked the characters, especially Nicky. The reader is made to feel connected and a part of everything that is happening. Nicky is quite a character, and I was really glad that Mr. Zito allowed us to venture into his thoughts and get to know him and what drives him. If you are interested in theater, like a well written mystery that holds your interest until the reveal or are just looking for a really good read...you’ll like meeting Nicky and his friends.… (meer)

Mysteries can be tricky books to pull off, wahat with having to figure out the balance of the plot and new characters to introduce and get the reader to care about, and competing against lots of books with essentially similar structures. In this case, though, Zito achieved the balance nicely, and came out with a book that is fairly light to read, has a good plot and fun characters, neither of which come off hackneyed.

This is the second of the mysteries starring Nicky D'Amico, an Italian-American stage director. In this one, he's returned to New York City to help manage a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream where many of the actors and associated staff are friends of his from college. These include both the love interests in the story, too, his ex Marcus and his friend Sean. The interplay between the characters really does get across that they're old pals.

The murder that comes at the end of Act I is of one of this set of friends, and there's no shortage of suspects, but all the information you need to figure out who really did it is there; I still guessed wrong, though. I'm not afraid to admit that, and it makes it easier to recommend the novel. The plot and pacing are quite good all around, I find, and the style, light and playful, works well, too.

There were a couple of points where I was rolling my eyes a bit, I have to say, because of the adherence to some mystery archetypes. When one character has a Big Secret that he can't share on the phone, and then wanders off at the theater, I knew that he was done for. But these moments are very few in the story, so it's easy to forgive.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book; it's sad that there won't be any more of them in the series now. It does make it easy to read all of them, though.… (meer)

This book turned out to be pretty good. Not great, mind; the mystery isn't well-turned enough, although I think it was possible to guess it. I didn't, but I think one might have been able to. That said, there were so many people and so many things floating around, it didn't have as much of an edge as some other mysteries I've read. There was too much going on to really develop much of a feeling of suspense, or, indeed, of great investment in the murders.

But, as much as I like hard-boiled mysteries, I have no problem with those of the somewhat sillier kind, and this fit that bill nicely. The dialogue was all right, although the internal monologue parts were better. The characterization, again, wasn't tremendous, since there were too many of them around, but at least several of them did feel differentiated, and the main character felt like a person. The plot... well, like I said, I think he tried putting a bit too much in, but I've read worse.

This is probably also the most unabashedly gay book I've ever read, and I've read the Gumshoe, the Witch and the Virtual Corpse several times. This book wasn't nearly as good as that one, mind, but if you want a fun mystery, you could certainly do worse.… (meer)