Review: Cut Me In

Cut Me In by Hunt Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Literary agent Josh Blake is having a bad day at the office. He’s hungover, one of his secretaries is late, and very pushy aspiring writer won’t take no for an answer. Oh, and he also finds his partner murdered in his office and their most valuable contract that’s about to be worth a fortune in movie rights is missing.

Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays!

This is a hard boiled mystery novel that has everything you’d expect from this kind of thing written in the ‘50s. Ed McBain writes up a solid noir character in the jerkish Blake who is more concerned with the missing contract than the dead partner. There’s a suspicious cop, some surprisingly polite thugs, and several gorgeous dames thrown into the mix, and it works well enough as an entertaining story. Good, but not inspired would be my usual judgement on it.

Yet there’s a surprising little bit right at the end that puts a whole new light on everything, and lifts it up a notch. I won’t quite go 4 stars on it, but it’d be an easy 3.5 if Goodreads would let us do that.


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