A Cool Breeze on the Underground

February 4, 1991
This ambitious but technically unsophisticated first entry in a series features street-wise New Yorker Neal Carey, a 23-year-old graduate student of 18th-century literature. Neal is directed by Friends of the Family, a discreet, private investigation agency for which he works, to find Allie Chase, the teenage, drug-addicted daughter of a U.S. senator and presidential hopeful. Allie is somewhere in England and must be returned to the States before the Democratic Convention nine weeks away. Neal finds Allie but is forced to use his cunning to bring her home; at the same time he suspects someone from the agency is trying to kill him. Winslow guides us on a tour of punk 1976 London and introduces some colorful characters. But this first novel loses much of its punch because Winslow overloads beginning chapters with his hero's personal history rather than pacing the plot with relevant details. Neal is a distant hero whose escapades seem artificially linked.

Narrator Joe Barrett is a good choice for this solid mystery--the first in Winslow's Neal Carey series. Much of the action takes place in Britain, and Barrett juggles various UK accents while still delivering the right tone and temperament for the American protagonist and his adopted father. The plot involves a Boston Brahmin, a senator's missing daughter, Brit punks, rare books, and a few helpful lessons in stalking. ("Always watch the feet, not the face.") It's taken 13 years for this novel to find its way to audio, and there's a bit of nostalgia--this thriller is cell phone and Internet free. R.W.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine