Swann's Last Song by Charles Saltzberg

I remember loving those dark detective novels, set in dark times in dark American cities. They were narrated by downbeat private eyes who kept getting it wrong but somehow always ended up right. The protagonist was always cynical, gritty and real, and the women were shapely, ill-fated, dangerous or desperate. But times have changed and I was looking for something more up-to-date, which Charles Saltzberg provides very expertly in Swann's Last Song.

Swann lives in modern times in a modern American city. He had a wife and child, and it wasn’t his fault he lost them. He’s wounded. He cares. Living the rather boring life of a present-day private eye—a skip tracer—he reads because what else would you do when you’re hiding in a car. He quotes poetry, buys drinks all round, and somehow ends up searching for the victim of a crime, its perpetrator, and himself. The investigation takes him across America and beyond, throwing him into and out of the unknown, twisting and turning as he stays one step ahead of the reader and two behind the answer.

Salzberg has created a worthy character in Swann, a narrator with dry wit and a pleasing sense of the absurd, and someone I sincerely hope to meet again on his next case.