Slow Dance in Autumn

by Philip Lee Williams

Book Overview

With crackling action and razor-sharp dialogue, award-winning author Philip Lee Williams brings the dark side of Atlanta to life with private detective Hank Prince. A former AAA baseball player,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0934601569
• ISBN13: 9780934601566
• Release Date: October 1988
• Publisher: Peachtree Publishers
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Worth a look, but don't hold your breath for a sequel

Philip Lee Williams is a fine author who specialises in introspective characters who find themselves somewhat unexpectedly at points of closure in their lives. His novels are flavored with nostalgia and regret, hopes and expectations unattained. Slow Dance in Autumn is Williams' shot at a detective story--although displayed rather prominently on the cover are the words "A Hank Prince Mystery Novel" as though it were one in a series, it should more accurately say "The Hank Prince Mystery Novel", given that after some 13 years another has not appeared. Prince is a wise-guy almost-was baseball player turned hard-drinking, hard-smoking PI facing hard times; he's intelligent but not overly competent in the dectecting trade. For me, the character was rather too familiar--true, we haven't had many fictional PI's in Atlanta, but that is scarcely unusual. And that in the author's note before the novel begins Williams inadvertently gives an enormous clue to the puzzle Prince faces ruined quite a bit of the suspense.With these caveats, Slow Dance in Autumn is a perfectly good detective story, but it didn't quite capture my imagination the way Williams' extraordinary other novels have, like All The Western Stars, Crossing Wildcat Ridge, or The Heart of a Distant Forest, all of which I most highly recommend. But Slow Dance in Autumn is not to be written off entirely--Williams has some very good lines, including perhaps the most intriguing line in detective fiction ever written: "The stretch of I-20 between Atlanta and Birmingham is like being stranded somewhere between Murmansk and Vladivostok with a phonetic alphabet book, no rubles and an empty bottle of vodka." Raymond Chandler must be rolling in his grave wishing he'd written that!