Foz Meadows's Reviews > The Obituarist

Patrick O'Duffy's latest work is a swift, sharp crime story characterised by the well-placed combination of deadpan humour and self-awareness. Part homage to Raymond Chandler, part techno-satire, The Obituarist is narrated by Kendall Barber, a former criminal who now makes an honest living tidying up the online detritus of the recently deceased. Yet when his professional association with a mysterious client sees him mistaken for a detective, the world he thought he'd escaped comes rising back up to claim him.

The Obituarist is a quick read, but no less powerful for it, as stripped-down and sleek as a greyhound. O'Duffy has a real skill for writing compact stories, which is why the ebook format suits him so well: though much shorter than the usual crime/thriller fare, The Obituarist is nonetheless a complex, well-rounded story whose climax and resolution both managed to take me by surprise (and which, I don't hesitate to add, would probably make for an excellent film). Though it loses points for failing the Bechdel test (there's only one female character) and for a particular exchange in the closing dialogue that rubbed me the wrong way, these are really my only complaints: otherwise, the premise is original and compelling, the plot engaging, the writing taut, the whole well-structured and the characterisation solid, especially given its length.

Particularly when it comes to the coherency of the motive and execution of the actual mystery, plenty of full-length crime novels have failed to do half so well - often, I suspect, because the authors have resorted to padding their material with idiot plots in order to reach the minimum acceptable length for a trade paperback. The Obituarist, however, is exactly as long as it needs to be, and not a sentence more. If you're a fan of films like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and books like Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein, I highly recommend The Obituarist - and even if you're not, it's definitely worth a look-in.