Iced

Whenever I read Jerry Peterson's books, I always finish the same way: I cast the book aside and resolve once again to work on boosting my own prose abilities to his level. Jerry Peterson has an easy way with characters and dialogue that can't be taught; you either have it, or you don't. Jerry has it in spades.

With ICED, Jerry has turned his attentions to a new detective series, this one fashioned after the Japanese “thumb-novels” that were so popular a few years ago. Each chapter is only a couple of pages. The prose is sparse, clean, and effective. There are no unnecessary words. The action clips along at a hyperkinetic pace. And the characters–oh man, the characters. Some writers can spend trilogies developing characters that don't feel half as real as Peterson's characters do in a few artfully crafted lines.

With John “Wads” Wadkowski, Jerry has sculpted a modern-day hard-boiled detective from the Dairy State. This is no small feat. Wads, and the other characters in Iced, leap off the page with unflinching verisimilitude and heart. The dialogue is lovely and rich, in that way that only really good mystery writers can do, energetic and lively. In short order, ICED gives us Elmore Leonard-equse banter, a nice car chase, a pistol duel in the Wisconsin Capitol Building, and a toilet fired out of a house like a cannonball. If you can't get behind that, brother, I don't know what to tell you.

ICED is the first in a new ongoing series for Jerry Peterson. If it continues on as strongly as his other series have, then count me a fan.