Headed for a Hearse, Jonathan Latimer

A solid not-for-me, here. It shows its age in the attitudes to women and people of colour, and in the open portrayal of the police as being unashamedly violent, arbitrary, and prone to going around the law to get a conviction.

I feel weird about the one-star rating, given I finished it and found it absorbing enough… but would I have picked it up at all if I hadn’t already owned it, from an “advent calendar” of Golden Age crime fiction books? No, probably not. As usual, I’m rating based on my enjoyment, not the literary merit I think the book has — though that’s small enough in this case, too.

One thing that was portrayed well was the attitudes of the men on Death Row. Their reactions and interactions were interesting, their fear well-drawn, even as they themselves were still unpleasant. The horror of their situation is clear, even if their actions were reprehensible.

Rating: 1/5