All That Glitters: A Great Western Detective League Case

A clunky and distracting framing device hampers Colt’s third crime thriller based on a real-life 19th-century “association of law enforcement professionals operating across the west” (after 2017’s The Bogus Bondsman). In 1909, reporter Robert Brentwood collects more reminiscences from retired U.S. Army Col. David Crook, who once headed the legendary Great Western Detective League and is now in a Denver rest home. Crook recounts his Colorado-based group’s efforts, in 1878, to catch a jewel thief, who took advantage of the noise of the fireworks for a Chinese New Year celebration in San Francisco to blow open a safe belonging to International Imports and make off with $60,000 in diamonds and other precious stones. Crook dispatches some of his operatives to California, where they learn that the theft is connected with shadowy criminal syndicate El Anillo. Back in 1909, Brentwood steels himself to propose to his beloved, Crook’s rest home attendant. Clichéd developments and lackluster prose (“A light scent of vanilla ice cream flavored her presence”) are a barrier to engagement with the unremarkable plot. (Jan.)