Mystery and Suspense Press 
an imprint of iUniverse - 2002

===================================== Review by E.Borgers 
=====================================

Johnny Lane is a well-known PI in Denver, Colorado, who even enjoys a kind of fame owing to his regular column, The Fast Lane, in the local newspaper. The investigations that he discloses in his column provides him with an easy way to promote himself, and the clients are ready to pay good money to have him on their cases. 

Women-wise, Johnny is not married, but is not really a womanizer, even if he is the type that dames seem to chase. Of course he’s interested, but he always seems to have difficulties with commitments, even those of short duration.

Money is easy, life is easy, and Johnny's soft-boiled attitude seems good enough to protect his business and to allow him to perform well as an investigator.

However, if everything is well it’s only until a young woman, Mary, asks him to help her find her birth parents, as she was adopted as a baby. During this investigation, a large part of Johnny Lane’s past will revive and explode in his face. He never really forgot his past, but he thought too easily that it was well behind him. Wrong, deadly wrong. 
Slowly, Johnny will do what a man got to do, in a spiral of murders and chaos.

Dave Zeltserman's first novel is based on a brilliant idea, making the PI the real psycho of the story. It’s difficult to go in more details without deflowering the plot and its articulations, but it’s equally difficult to speak about this book and not refer to the near-schizophrenic behavior of the central character.
The subject manipulated by the author is ambitious, although it seems that in the first part, which is almost half of the book, Johnny Lane’s behavior does not match the profile. Even if we understand that the author wanted to show Lane’s psychological problems as dormant, we regret the unnecessary length of this phase that could perhaps confuse the reader in the wrong way. The first-person narration does not help either, as it usually reinforces the introspective side of the narrator, which does not happen in most of the book.
On the other hand, the second half of the novel, which is told in a fast pace, gives a good description of Lane’s contradictions and deep nature, underlining his confused temper.

The writing style remains simple and clear throughout, but the potential richness and complexity of the central character seem not totally exploited in Zeltserman’s novel. And the dedication of the book to the memory of Jim Thompson can only reinforce our mixed feelings about it.
But, In His Shadow is an interesting descent into the darkest levels of noir…
 

E.Borgers - 30 June 2002
Copyright © 2002, E.Borgers