{"id":1027,"date":"2013-05-31T17:37:21","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T23:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2013-05-31T17:37:21","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T23:37:21","slug":"steve-ulfelder-purgatory-chasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/steve-ulfelder-purgatory-chasm\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Ulfelder: Purgatory Chasm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When is a P.I. not a P.I.?\u00a0 Today\u2019s rash of younger male writers are taking a look at that question, and they all have a different answer.\u00a0 Tim O\u2019Brien has a teacher; Brad Parks, a reporter.\u00a0 Steve Ulfelder has an auto mechanic AA member whose main motive is revenge.\u00a0 Really, though, the motives of the P.I. haven\u2019t changed:\u00a0 to a man, the new P.I.s\u00a0 are interested in putting things right simply because it\u2019s the right thing to do.\u00a0 It looks like what\u2019s surviving from the long standing P.I. trope is not the private eye aspect itself, but the white knight aspect.\u00a0 That\u2019s something I can get behind.<\/p>\n

\"purgatorychasm\"<\/a>Ulfelder\u2019s Conway Sax is definitely one of the new breed of detective.\u00a0 Ulfelder\u2019s real life race car and mechanic experience is integrated very nicely into this novel, as is the AA aspect.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure the AA aspect is as real as the car stuff, but it feels real. Conway\u2019s AA group calls itself the \u201cBarnburners\u201d and they don\u2019t take affronts to their tight circle lightly, so when one Tander Phigg, a fellow Barnburner, approaches Conway about money owed to him by a sketchy car restoration place, Conway feels he has to check it out even though he\u2019s not all that fond of Tander.<\/p>\n

Of course the novel isn\u2019t really about car restoration (though it plays a small part), it instead turns out, as all good books do, to be about the ties between families and friends and what holds them together or, more importantly, divides them.\u00a0 Tander\u2019s complicated family history emerges after he\u2019s inevitably found dead by Conway, an apparent suicide.\u00a0 Anyone who has ever read a mystery novel will know that Tander\u2019s death is no suicide \u2013 but who is responsible turns out to be a real puzzle.<\/p>\n

In this first novel, Ulfelder gives his main character a lot of depth by talking about his AA involvement and then introducing his family backstory and the way he got into car racing.\u00a0 Lots of the detail is unique.\u00a0 Though the story hews to some well established tropes, Ulfelder makes it fresh by making his character very firmly a member of the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0 He\u2019s far from an old school P.I., but I\u2019m interested in how the new school P.I.s are going to shape.\u00a0 If Ulfelder is any indication, I\u2019m looking forward to the journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When is a P.I. not a P.I.?\u00a0 Today\u2019s rash of younger male writers are taking a look at that question, and they all have a different answer.\u00a0 Tim O\u2019Brien has a teacher; Brad Parks, a reporter.\u00a0 Steve Ulfelder has an auto mechanic AA member whose main motive is revenge.\u00a0 Really, though, the motives of the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-p-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1029,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}