Trouble in Rooster Paradise: A Gunnar Nilson Mystery

Despite its ungainly title, Emory’s first novel vividly evokes the ambiance of classic American hard-boiled crime writing. While recovering from an injury, aging gumshoe Gunnar Nilson regales his nurse with a case he solved decades before. In 1950, a beautiful young woman, Christine Johanson, is murdered in Ballard, a Seattle suburb then heavily populated by Scandinavian immigrants. Christine worked at a high-end jewelry store that seemed to encourage its male clientele to flirt with the salesgirls. Suspicion initially falls on Christine’s hot-headed boyfriend, Dirk Engstrom; but Nilson—brought in to minimize bad publicity for the store—suspects other customers at the jewelry shop who were also Christine’s admirers. Emory, a Seattle native, captures the period setting well, but irrelevant digressions and a tendency to dwell on the cultural artifacts of 1950 slow down the action. One hopes Nilson’s second outing will have a tighter plot. [em](July) [/em]