Umbrella Man

Jack Flippo #4

by Doug J. Swanson

Marty Dufrain, owner of a black-and-white film of the Kennedy assassination, leads Jack Flippo on a perilous quest to find out the truth about Kennedy's murder, a trail that brings him face to face with a homicidal con man and an ailing ex-killer with some less-than-bright sons-in-law. By the author of Big Town.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

273 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Peter Dragovich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as big a fan of this as I am the previous Flippo novels, but then I rate those really high so it might be an expectations issue. Felt like we were in the dark too long on how the characters were going to connect up with one another. Once we do finally get our bearings, however, we’re ahead of the other characters for a hundred pages. So didn’t hit its stride with me but still had some fun characters and situations, some funny dialogue. Swanson has these really memorable bondage situations as a running thing. I remember the one guy getting his neck locked to the pipe under the bathroom sink with a u-shaped bike lock in Big Town, now here he has that guy get his whole tracksuit nailed to the floor. Also, the piece of plywood over the burnt out bathroom bathtub then covered in heavy sandbags was another cool idea in this novel. Flippo is not tripping over his dick in this one though, and there’s some passages herein about him trying to mature. Curious if there’s a full character arc to the series when I get to book five. I have been reading this series over the course of apparently 30 years? So like middle school? Guess I am savoring it.

[Scott Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A conspiracy-linked Dallas noir from 1999. I missed it back then, and it has become the first "summer beach read" (although my beach is my backyard pool and hot tub) I've done in about 6 years. Swanson's excellent, bloody history of the Texas Rangers turned me on to his detective novels, of which this is one of the last. Very well written and funny, with an extremely obtuse ending. I'll likely be reading the other 2 of this series, and most anything else the fellow writes (his history of Texas Poker might be next).