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The Road's End
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 6, 2019
Albert Conroy is a pseudonym of Marvin H. Albert, a writer of many fine crime and western novels. For a while in the middle 1900s there were plenty of movies and books with an amnesia storyline, where someone gets bonked on the head and doesn’t remember anything. In this short novel, Dan Ginger, a philandering jackass, wakes up after being left for dead with no recall of what happened to him and soon is accused of the murder of a young woman that he has been fooling around with. Dan has to try to solve the murder, which turns out to be a complex web of people and events that he needs to piece together without the aid of his memory. This is truly an excellent novel with razor sharp plotting and pacing, and many vibrant characters. Best amnesia book I’ve ever read. An easy five stars.
March 18, 2025
This was just what I want from a trashy, hard-boiled paperback.
I normally dislike amnesia stories. They often come a few books or seasons into a series. I know who the character is, but they have forgotten. It's frustrating to see them stumble through their life, wondering who they are while I want to shout at the book/TV screen, "Wake up! You're ____!"
This book takes different tack with the cliche. The book starts with the amnesiac coming to, both he and the reader knowing nothing. Slowly the protagonist begins to piece together who he is. His name is Danny Ginger. He's married, owns half of a semi-successful tavern, and is kind of a jerk. He's been cheating on his wife with a number of women and one of them is dead. Chapter by chapter, Danny and the reader start to put the puzzle together.
This was fun. The chapters were super short—5 or so pages—so the reveals, bullets, and dead bodies came fast and furious. There's a few juicy subplots to complicate Danny's search for the truth. There's also a half a dozen women falling all over Danny throughout the book. (The author sure enjoyed describing the thrust of their breasts.) It kind of made Danny out to be a scumbag—or at least the pre-amnesiac version of himself was.
A note on the copy of the book I read: it has to be one of the dirtiest books I've ever handled. There were dark fingerprints on almost every page, making me wonder if the book was read by an autoworker or a coal-miner on the job. There seemed to be more dark fingerprints on the pages where the ladies got undressed. Go figure.
I normally dislike amnesia stories. They often come a few books or seasons into a series. I know who the character is, but they have forgotten. It's frustrating to see them stumble through their life, wondering who they are while I want to shout at the book/TV screen, "Wake up! You're ____!"
This book takes different tack with the cliche. The book starts with the amnesiac coming to, both he and the reader knowing nothing. Slowly the protagonist begins to piece together who he is. His name is Danny Ginger. He's married, owns half of a semi-successful tavern, and is kind of a jerk. He's been cheating on his wife with a number of women and one of them is dead. Chapter by chapter, Danny and the reader start to put the puzzle together.
This was fun. The chapters were super short—5 or so pages—so the reveals, bullets, and dead bodies came fast and furious. There's a few juicy subplots to complicate Danny's search for the truth. There's also a half a dozen women falling all over Danny throughout the book. (The author sure enjoyed describing the thrust of their breasts.) It kind of made Danny out to be a scumbag—or at least the pre-amnesiac version of himself was.
A note on the copy of the book I read: it has to be one of the dirtiest books I've ever handled. There were dark fingerprints on almost every page, making me wonder if the book was read by an autoworker or a coal-miner on the job. There seemed to be more dark fingerprints on the pages where the ladies got undressed. Go figure.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews