Old Tin Sorrows re-read

(Originally posted on Thursday, 14 February 2019)

My original rating: 10/10
My final rating: 10/10

My original ranking: the best Garrett P.I. novel
My final rating: the best Garrett P.I. novel

Old Tin Sorrows is an unbelievably gripping novel. I couldn't put it down even though I knew how it would end. AWESOME!

There are several very good action scenes. There are many scenes (action and non-action scenes) that are very memorable. The mystery is great. The little things are perfect. And the ending is very thought-provoking as far as killer's motives are concerned.

Here are some spoiler-free quotes. Enjoy!

    Bone-lazy, Morley would call me, but that's a base canard from a character without the moral fiber to sit still more than five minutes. I'm not lazy; I'd just rather not work if I don't need money. When I do, I operate as a confidential agent. Which means I spend a lot of time in the middle, between people you wouldn't invite to dinner. Kidnappers. Blackmailers. Thugs and thieves and killers.
    My, the things kids grow up to be.

    Trying not to work when I don't need money means looking through the peephole first when someone knocks on the door of my place on Macunado Street. If whoever is there looks like a prospective client, I simply don't answer.

    Whenever the big troubles came, the harbinger always wore a skirt and looked like something you couldn't find anywhere but in your dreams. In case that's too subtle, it's like this: I've got a weakness for ripe tomatoes. But I'm learning. Give me about a thousand years and ...
    This wasn't any tomato. This was a guy I'd known a long time ago and never expected to see again. One I hadn't ever wanted to see again when we'd parted. And he just looked uncomfortable out there, not like he was in trouble. So I opened the door.
    That was my first mistake.

    His name was Blake Peters. The guys in the company called him Black Pete. He'd been our leading sergeant and the nearest thing to a god or devil any one of us had known, the kind of professional soldier that gives an outfit its spine. I couldn't imagine him as a civilian. Three years out? He looked like a Marine sergeant in disguise.
    There was a time when we'd gotten caught with our pants down on one of the islands. A surprise Venageti invasion nearly wiped us out. We survivors had fled into the swamps and had lived on whatever didn't eat us first while we harrassed the Venageti. Sergeant Peters had brought us through that. I owed him for that.
    But I owed him more. He'd carried me away when I'd been injured during a raid. He hadn't had to do it. I couldn't have done anything but lie there waiting for the Venageti to kill me.

    A fat raindrop got me in the back of the neck. I scampered up a dozen marble steps to the porch. I took a minute to arrange my face so I wouldn't look impressed when somebody answered the door. You want to deal with the rich, you've got to overcome the intimidation factor of wealth.
    The door – which would have done a castle proud as a drawbridge – swung in without a sound, maybe a foot. A man looked out. All I could see was his face. I almost asked him what the grease bill was for silencing those monster hinges.

    I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the idea of being rich. I guess most people do. But if this was the way the rich had to live, I thought maybe I could settle for less.

    “The General will see you now, sir.” He turned and marched away.
    I followed. I caught myself marching in step, skipped to get out. In a minute I was back in step. I gave it up. They'd pounded it in good. The flesh remembered and couldn't hear the rebellion in the mind.

    The dining room was a dinning room. The kind where a guy can entertain three hundred of his closest friends. Most of it was dark. Everybody was seated at one corner table. The decor was standard for the house, armor and edged steel.

    The girl and guys I hadn't met looked me over. The men looked like retired Marines. Surprise, surprise. The girl looked good. She'd changed into her vamping clothes.
    Garrett, you dog . . . The thought fled. This one gave off something sour. She was radiating the come-and-get-it and my reaction was to back off. Here was trouble on the hoof. What was it Morley said? Don't never fool around with a woman who's crazier than you are?
    Maybe I was growing up.

    I paused. Go ahead like the cavalry? Or exercise a little caution? Caution didn't go with the image I wanted to project. But it did contribute to an extended life. And nobody was looking.

    The word disinformation trotted through my mind. From the spy game. Provide not just false information but more information than necessary, most of it untrustworthy, so that all information received came under shadow of doubt.
    I backed off, leaned against a wall, nodded to myself. Yeah. That felt like a good intuition. I was going to be allowed to find out all kinds of things, most of which were untrue, useless, or misleading. Hard to put a puzzle together when you've got three times too many pieces.

    Dotes was doing sit-ups, chunking them out like a machine. My stomach hurt just watching.
    “You're in pretty good shape for a guy your age,” I told him. I wasn't sure what that was. It could be substantial. He's part dark-elf. Elves can last a long time.
    “I take it you're working again.” He said it while popping up and down. Like there was no strain to what he was doing.
    I told myself I had to start doing a few exercises. At my age, when you lose it, it's hard to get back. (...).

    Sometimes you guess right and sometimes you don't. I don't a lot more than I do.

    Maybe it was their background, all those years in the war zone. When my company went in, there were two hundred of us, officers, sergeants, and men, who had trained together and been hammered into a single unit. Two years later there were eighteen originals left. Guys went down. After a while you accepted that. After a while you accepted the fact that your turn was coming. You went on and stayed alive as long as you could. You become completely fatalistic.

    “Lead on, noble knight.” Morley rags me about being romantic and sentimental. He has his moments himself – like turning up here. He'd never admit he was concerned about me swimming in a school of sharks. He'd just claim he was curious.

    “Have you nothing positive to report, Mr. Garrett?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Any suspects?”
    “No sir. Everybody. I'm having trouble making sense of the situation. I don't know the people well enough yet.”
    He looked at me like he was thinking I should be living up to one of those Corps mottos like “The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a minute longer.” (...)