Review: Mink Eyes by Max McBride

Peter O'Keefe, a PI and owner of a detective agency, is hired by a high school friend now high powered attorney, Harrigan, to investigate irregularities at a mink farm in the Ozarks. The manager has disappeared along with profits and the owners and investors appear to have been ensnared in a ponzi scheme. This should have been a relatively simple job: check out the farm, review the books, question the wife  on the whereabouts of the missing manager. Things go very bad, very quickly when two gun thugs appear on the scene, also looking for the missing money. O'Keefe finds himself in a life or death situation as he tries to save both himself and the wife of missing manager. Complicating matters is his instant and intense attraction to the wife. Will it be a fatal attraction?

Mink Eyes is a period piece set in 1986 which allows us to have a Vietnam veteran as a protagonist. It also means that the investigation has to be done old school: no internet and no cell phones. It's refreshing to go back to this type of detective story.

I would put O'Keefe into the "defective detective" category. In addition to being a combat veteran, he drinks and smokes too much and has become deeply disillusioned both with his job and his life. One consequence is that he has separated from his wife though he attempts to stay involved with his daughter. His friend, the lawyer Harrigan, is equally disillusioned with the way his life and career have gone.

I had a difficult time getting into the story initially because there were, what seemed to me, too many "dark night of the soul" moments with O'Keefe and Harrigan. About half way through, O'Keefe rebounds from his deep depression over events at the mink farm and the story gets cracking again with a dramatic locaiton change and leading to a thrilling and very satisfying conclusion.

Mink Eyes does a slow build and takes time to set up O'Keefe's environment. I like the way the author goes into the day-to-day operations of a detective agency particularly regarding his office manager, Sarah. Sarah wants to get out of the office and into the field and work investigations in the field. O'Keefe has a "women must not be put into danger", parochial frame of mind. I think the author does a nice job with this and it's a theme worth exploring.

This is McBride's first novel and a good, solid, contribution to the private investigator genre. I think the ending of Mink Eyes sets up the potential for a sequel or two and I hope the author has that in mind as well. There are elements that could be expanded into more novels.