Book Review: The Man in the Crooked Hat

The Man in the Crooked Hat by Harry Dolan

My mom and I had visited the local public library for some quality mother/daughter time. It was a lot of fun. Our local library is pretty nice for a small community, and I like to support it. This title was in the new release area, and I thought I would give it a try.

Book Blurb from Goodreads:

"A new master mystery writer emerges."--Forbes Magazine

One cryptic clue leads a desperate man into a labyrinthine puzzle of murder in the electrifying new novel from national bestselling author Harry Dolan.

There's a killer, and he wears a crooked hat.

Private investigator Jack Pellum has spent two years searching for the man who he believes murdered his wife--a man he last saw wearing a peacoat and a fedora. Months of posting fliers and combing through crime records yield no leads. Then a local writer commits suicide, and he leaves a bewildering message that may be the first breadcrumb in a winding trail of unsolved murders . . .

Michael Underhill is a philosophical man preoccupied by what-ifs and could-have-beens, but his life is finally coming together. He has a sweet and beautiful girlfriend, and together they're building their future home. Nothing will go wrong, not if Underhill has anything to say about it. The problem is, Underhill has a dark and secret past, and it's coming back to haunt him.

These two men are inexorably drawn together in a mystery where there is far more than meets the eye, and nothing can be taken for granted. Filled with devious reversals and razor-sharp tension, The Man in the Crooked Hat is a masterwork from "one of America's best new crime writers" (Lansing State Journal).

Find it on Goodreads

The Man in the Crooked Hat sounded like an excellent read. It’s about a detective trying to solve his wife’s murder. He thinks it was done by a serial killer. The story follows him as he unravels the clues to confront the murderer. It is a psychological thriller, which is not my usual genre. In all reality, I was left disappointed at the ending.

The writing was hard to get into. The author tended to write in short choppy sentences, and it felt disjointed to me.  I had a hard time getting into the story. He wrote from both the detective’s perspective and the murderer, which I don’t really care for. So I knew who had killed the wife, it was just a matter of figuring it out why she was killed. I just couldn’t get into the characters. I felt like Jack Pelum was too whiny, and Micheal Underhill was very odd. I felt unsatisfied by the time the story ended.

This was not my kind of book but maybe you will enjoy it?

Tank gives it: 🐾🐾