{"id":1101,"date":"2013-08-30T18:21:08","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T00:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1101"},"modified":"2013-08-30T18:21:08","modified_gmt":"2013-08-31T00:21:08","slug":"d-e-johnson-detroit-shuffle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/d-e-johnson-detroit-shuffle\/","title":{"rendered":"D.E. Johnson: Detroit Shuffle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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D.E. Johnson\u2019s fourth novel in his dark chronicle of 1912 Detroit and the frequently unlucky life of protagonist Will Anderson is also a look at the Women\u2019s Suffrage movement.\u00a0 These novels are tight and move quickly, with lots of action sequences \u2013 this has a notable section set in an actual salt mine \u2013 that keep the pages flying even if, as I do, you frequently feel squeamish about what\u2019s happening to Will.<\/p>\n

\"detroitshuffle\"<\/a>In the last novel, Detroit Breakdown, <\/i>Will went undercover in the giant Eloise mental hospital where his girlfriend\u2019s brother was a resident.\u00a0 This has left him with some residual issues, and it\u2019s left his girlfriend, Elizabeth, not only with a mother who has dementia at home but her brother Robert and his friend Francis, both of whom seem to suffer from, at the very least, some form of Asperger\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Will includes Robert and Francis on a few of his adventures as they have a mechanical aptitude as well as some skill in lock picking (Robert).\u00a0 The main thrust of the story concerns an attempt on Elizabeth\u2019s life at a Suffrage rally \u2013 which no-one believes, because of the radium poisoning Will suffered at Eloise.\u00a0 Elizabeth loves him, but she thinks he\u2019s still not right in the head.<\/p>\n

As Will doggedly pursues the possible assassin of his beloved Elizabeth, he starts to unravel a conspiracy of corruption involving the upcoming election, which includes a chance to vote for Women\u2019s Sufffrage.\u00a0 He has to go to some lengths to prove this, however.<\/p>\n

For a writer of such dark material, Johnson also writes sensitively about addiction, mental illness, and the fate of women, while writing about them not as objects or victims but as valiant fighters and equal (if not superior) players in life.\u00a0 It brings a real richness and depth to his work, and it makes Will not a noir hero, but a real hero \u2013 one who is always proved to be right, despite the way things always look at the beginning of his stories.<\/p>\n

I loved the inclusion of Robert and Francis, too.\u00a0 They bring some comic relief to this complex story.\u00a0 My favorite scene in the whole book has the two of them, along with Will, eating dinner at what\u2019s called a \u201cSelf Serv\u201d but which sounds like a cafeteria. I\u2019m sure Johnson doesn\u2019t want his two main characters to settle down happily ever after, but they\u2019re lurching in that direction.\u00a0 This is an interesting series and Johnson has a unique voice.\u00a0 I hope there are many more installments to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

D.E. Johnson\u2019s fourth novel in his dark chronicle of 1912 Detroit and the frequently unlucky life of protagonist Will Anderson is also a look at the Women\u2019s Suffrage movement.\u00a0 These novels are tight and move quickly, with lots of action sequences \u2013 this has a notable section set in an actual salt mine \u2013 that … 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":[10,15],"class_list":["post-1101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical","tag-michigan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101","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=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1103,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions\/1103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}