After a fall from his roof, breaking his leg, Gunnar Nilson (who must be at least in his late 70s) is spending some time in an assisted living home in Everett, Washington. The date is Monday June 2 2003. He aqppears to have been in the home for a week or two.

His new caregiver is young Kirsti Liddell, working at the home for the summer. Kirsti finds out that Gunnar was once a private investigator in Seattle. She persuades him to spend time with her when she is off duty telling her about one of his cases. She proposes to make a written record of her interviews which she can submit for an extra credit paper in her college course.

Gunnar chooses an investigation into a murder that began over 50 years earlier, June 7, 1950.

This provides an interesting plot construct. Kirsti records Gunnar's story on a tape recorder so that she can transcribe it. Their interviews take place over a number of sessions.

Seattle has changed a lot in 50 years, and of course in 1950 the second World War is only just over, so Gunnar is able to talk about how the war affected various people, and what life was like then. The novel is filled with interesting characters particularly those who live in the boarding house where Gunnar resides.

This is a debut title. ( )

This first book by author T. W. Emory is a bit of a slog because of the author's attempt to juggle three storylines. The story focuses on Gunnar, a former private investigator (actual age not clear but seemingly a retired senior) who recently broke his leg attempting to clean the gutters of his house ("it's high time to pay someone else to clean my gutters"). It seems that he was not in a relationship given that he is convalescing in a nursing home and has no visitors. Kristi, a young intern employed by the nursing home for the summer, learns what Gunnar used to do for a living and convinces him to tell her about one of his cases "from start to finish." The main storyline consists of Gunnar's recounting of the case, with periodic but brief interruptions turning the attention back to the present relationship between Gunnar and Kristi. The third storyline focuses on the boarding house where Gunnar lived during the investigation he is describing. In addition to Gunnar the residents include Gunnar's friend Walter, the former fan dancer who owns the boarding house, and her nephew.

The periodic shift of focus to the relationship between Gunnar and Kristi and to life in the boarding house are largely uninteresting interruptions that do little to advance the plot. As a consequence, the story moves along at a slow pace and I had difficulty maintaining my interest. Removing that material would allow the plot to unfold at a snappier pace but it would also reduce the novel to the 125-140 page length characteristic of pulp fiction. It almost seems that the added storylines were included to expand the novel because Gunnar's case lacks the complexity needed to sustain a longer treatment.

Emory fails to convey a genuine feel for Seattle in the 1950s. He mentions the names of restaurants, businesses, and locations that are familiar to those who lived in Seattle in the 50s but his approach is largely one of name-dropping. Merely including the name of an old-time business does not create a realistic feel of Seattle at that time. This was Seattle before the freeway, the Seattle Center, and the Space Needle. In those days Seattle was a city of two-lane highways and electric busses. The absence of the freeway bridge over the ship canal meant that the opening of the drawbridges regularly stopped traffic. Before college basketball became the big business it is today Seattle was home of world-class basketball. Sports fans followed the athletic feats of the O'Brien twins and Elgin Baylor at Seattle University and Bob "Hooks" Houbregs at the University of Washington. Hugh McElhenney, an All-American running back starred at the UW and Seattleites continued to follow his magical feats with the San Francisco 49ers once he turned pro. The Seattle Rainiers played in the Pacific Coast (baseball) league and the Seattle Totems were a fan favorite in the Western Hockey League. It is difficult to imagine a boarding house that did not have one of those sports broadcasting on the radio and Gunnar would almost certainly have taken his lady friends to one of those events. This stands in contrast to the excellent descriptions Emory provides of the physical appearance of the primary characters.

Given the slow-moving pace, Emory fails to create any sense of tension or suspense. A wealthy man's grandson has been jailed as a murder suspect and the evidence looks convincing. Gunnar has been hired to make sure the police investigation is on the up and up and the evidence is convincing. Gunnar visits the grandson briefly and almost immediately—for no discernable reason—two attempts are made on Gunnar's life. In a sense that hijacks the story. The grandson does not appear again until the very end of the book so the reader does not identify or sympathize with the grandson nor develop a genuine interest in whether he will be shown to be guilty or innocent. The reader isn't even given any reason to believe that Gunnar actually cares whether the accused is innocent. Finding out who made the attempt on Gunnar's life and why seems to be the primary focus of the book but of course the protagonist is not going to be killed so the story lacks emotional impact. ( )