The Cracked Earth

Jack Liffey #2

by John Shannon

This time the cool L.A. private eye gets seriously shaken by a series of powerful earthquake tremors -- and a jolting encounter with a retired sex goddess.

Genres: Mystery

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

John Shannon is a contemporary American author, lately of detective fiction. He began his career with four well-reviewed novels in the 1970s and 1980s, then in 1996 launched the Jack Liffey mystery series. He cites as his literary influences Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, Robert Stone and Jim Harrison.

Reviews

[Tom Coffey · Rating 2 out of 5]

True confession: I had no idea this book existed, and I won it by answering a trivia question after a panel discussion at the Boucheron mystery conference in Nashville in late August. I was intrigued, since I got an advanced reader copy, and the publisher is reissuing the series, and I wondered what all that was about ..... and, after reading this, I'm wondering why the publisher is reissuing the series. The protagonist is a world-weary P.I. in Los Angeles who specializes in tracking down missing kids. He has a complicated personal life, and he has money problems, and he has sex with a woman who's way out of his league, and if you've read all this before, it's because you have. And there are earthquakes. Because it's Los Angeles. And although they're supposed to be symbolic of something (I HATE SYMBOLISM!!!!!!!!!!), it all feels extremely deus ex machina.

[Corny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just don’t care about Liffey and his endless observations about the world around him. The plot is thin and uninteresting. After a promising start, the story bogs down with pretentious nonsense. The author introduces new characters every couple of chapters, many of whom are irrelevant. The ending is a letdown. I’m through with this series. Can’t believe there are 15 of them.

[bobg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jack is a cliché: a Viet Nam vet turned PI, failed at other careers, cops hate him, divorced, women (from very young to aged) fall into his arms, has a daughter he sees once in a while, and is a walking talking political billboard. Not many surprises here.

[Chris Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

So LA that u can smell the smog laced street tacos.

[Lukasz Pruski · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Cracked Earth" is the second book in John Shannon's series about Jack Liffey, a sort of private detective, who specializes in finding missing kids. In this novel, Jack is hired by an aging famous Hollywood actress (whom he idolized in his youth) to find her missing teenage daughter. The plot widens considerably and Jack has to deal with cutting-edge video game outfits, movie companies, Jamaican gangster, Japanese companies, local skinheads and Nazi followers, and more. And even more - quite a lot of carnality is involved.

Professional critics often liken the series to Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. I respectfully disagree; to me, the beginning of this novel, as well as some later parts, are wonderfully reminiscent of the great Ross Macdonald's writing. Jack Liffey is more intelligent than Marlowe and yet somehow more human, just like Lew Archer.

I was happy to discover that the novel is the second in the series because later Liffey books (and I have read almost all of them by now) often reek of cheap political correctness. Well, the happiness did not last long. Mr. Shannon has his heart in the right place (meaning to the left of center), sure, but in this novel he does the social/racial thing wrong again: brazenly, superficially, grotesquely.

Numerous "signature Shannon" scenes, where something extremely strange is happening in Los Angeles, add to the pleasure of reading. For instance, there is a post-earthquake scene with a grenadier who smells like beef bouillon. There is a wedding party running after a guy and cutting the tux on him with scissors. Jack finds the collected works of Lenin in a house in Hollywood Hills.

The bit about Kandinsky and synesthesia is great. Some of the final action happens close to Mulholland Drive, one of the most fascinating streets in the world. The apocalyptic scenes near the end of the novel are well written; a lesser writer would not be able to make them sound as plausible.

This is a very strange book; it combines a penetrating and wickedly funny portrayal of contemporary Los Angeles, both the place and the people, with grossly inane scenes that are supposed to illustrate the aggravation of various social and racial issues. Almost all of the bad guys are exaggerated caricatures. The hackers' dialogues sound infuriatingly bad. Admiral Wicks and Michael Chen make hard drives jump across the room, thousands of miles away, just by typing clever code. I know it is supposed to be humor, but well... It does not work.

If one could skip over all scenes that forward the plot and read only the Los Angeles bits, one would find a great book.

Two and three quarters stars.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shannon's books had gotten such great blurbs from writers I admire, such as Michael Connelly, so I had high expectations. And starting it, it seemed to live up to those expectations. It reminded me a lot of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer books (one of my favorites). But as it went on, I started to lose interest and the book began to wander, seeming to look for a plot. When I finally finished the book, I realized that Shannon wasn't really interested in plot; his main interest seemed to be Liffey's struggle with existence (and that sounds more pretentious than I meant it). There is no real mystery - the first solution someone puts forth for the initial crime turns out to be correct - and for a book labeled as mystery, there isn't even a murder (not that murders are required in mysteries, but it helps elevate the stakes). His description of the earthquake that ends the book is marvelous and did somewhat redeem the ending of the book, but the ultimate resolution left me pretty cold and uninterested in continuing with Jack. But then I checked out the blurbs again and noticed that Connelly had blurbed a specific book (The Concrete River), so I may just have to check that one out.

[Avra Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really really liked this la noir. nice and classic while not feeling stale. How could I not have heard of Shannon before? I will keep reading about jack Liffey for sure.

[Regine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overheated.