In Peter Colt’s gritty, gripping new series set along the New England coast, a Boston-born Vietnam veteran and P.I. is hired to find a missing father—but may find far more than he bargained for . . . Boston, 1982. Private investigator Andy Roark has spent the past decade trying to rediscover his place in the world. In Vietnam, there was order and purpose. Everything—no matter how … matter how brutal—happened for a reason. Back home, after brief stints in college and with the police force, Roark has settled for a steady, easy routine of divorce and insurance fraud cases.
Roark’s childhood friend, Danny Sullivan, dragged himself out of blue-collar Southie to become a respected and powerful lawyer. Now he wants Roark to help one of his clients with a sensitive request. Deborah Swift, wealthy wife of an aspiring California politician, is trying to trace her father, last seen on Cape Cod, who walked out on her and her mother long ago. Other investigators have turned up nothing, but Roark’s local connections might give him an edge.
The case takes Roark to the island of Nantucket, tranquil in its off-season, and laden with picturesque charm. Yet even here, on the quaint cobblestoned streets and pristine beaches, Roark’s finely honed senses alert him to danger just below the surface. Nothing is quite as it seems. And the biggest case of Roark’s career may just shatter what little peace of mind he has left . . .
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Where were you in 1982? Peter Colt’s The Off-Islander is much more than a period piece. Colt’s maiden effort introduces P.I. Andy Roark trying to locate a mysterious missing person. The closer this former Vietnam vet gets to finding his mystery man, the more people seem to want him dead. Colt knows the terrain, and the character, and has the personal background to make the most out of them. The Off-Islander is a gripping debut, and readers will certainly want more.
It is 1982 as The Off-Islander: An Andy Roark Mystery by Peter Colt begins. Andy Roark came home from Vietnam with more than a trace of post-traumatic stress disorder and an inability to easily fit back into the normal chaos of everyday society. He tried college, the police force, and these days works as a private investigator in Boston.
His usual cases are insurance fraud and divorce work. Take a few pictures for a client, write a report, and move on after collecting a modest fee. His oldest and closest friend dating back to kindergarten is Danny Sullivan. Instead of Vietnam, Danny went to Harvard Law, and these days makes a lot of money defending various clients and most of them are a bit shady. He has a new client and this one does not seem to be shady on the surface of things.
The new client, Deborah Swift, is a bit eccentric and very wealthy. Her husband is being considered by the power brokers that be for a run as United States Senator on behalf of California. Image is everything and the fact that her father came home from Korea, and soon afterwards walked out on the family and vanished, could be a problem. He could just easily be dead or alive living a new life doing who knows what.
A nationwide detective agency could not find anything. They did turn up a little information that a locally based private investigator might have a better way of running down one way or the other. One of those leads goes to nearby Nantucket Island. Deborah Swift wants to hire Roark to use his knowledge of the local area and see if he can quietly and discreetly determine what happened to her father all these many years later.
Before long, he is working the case and things are not going well. Leads seem to be next to worthless and Andy Roark is not getting anywhere fast. It does not help that Danny is expecting results and pushing hard as he needs this client to be happy. This client and the money she brings could be Danny’s ticket to the bigtime. At worst, she is a way for him to ditch his shady clients who pay, but lack respectability. Roark’s PTSD is not helping things either and memories of Vietnam are never far away in The Off-Islander: An Andy Roark Mystery by Peter Colt.
Somewhere around a third or a little more of this book is the memories of war. For one generation, Vietnam was their father’s Korea. That forgotten war as well as the nightmare of Vietnam and how society treated those who came home each time is a constant background to the current mystery.
This is the debut novel of a series and as such there is a lot of character foundation laying in the read. That angle may bore some readers though I personally was not bothered. The mystery took a bit to get going which may also turn off some readers who buy into the current notion that a body must drop in the first three paragraphs. To avoid that, a brief prologue from an action scene late in the read is inserted at the start to prove to potential readers that violent things are to come. They are and a lot of them.
I enjoyed The Off-Islander: An Andy Roark Mystery by Peter Colt.
My copy came from the Skillman Southwestern Branch of the Dallas Public Library System and was picked up just before the pandemic shuttered their doors.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2020
I particularly appreciated the author’s characterization of the Vietnam War, considering he was not born until the end of the war.
Not my kind of book
If you like your mysteries to be old-school in the vein of John D. MacDonald, or even farther back to Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, then you will appreciate this striking debut by Peter Colt. Long on atmosphere, detail, and character, it could place detective Andy Roark amongst the classic noir sleuths.
I loved this book! Andy Roark, a Vietnam vet, is a PI in Boston, who accepts a case from his best friend, a high powered attorney. The client wants Roark to find her father, who’s been out of touch for decades. Not to connect with him, but to make sure that there’s no dirt which could embarrass her political husband’s run for high office.
There are plenty of twists in this well written action filled book. Andy is a complex, intense character who grew up in South Boston. He struggles with vividly described Vietnam flashbacks, but still functions in the real world. I appreciate that Andy is a reader to offset the violence in his life.
Finally, the author is pitch perfect on Boston and the “Southie” culture which is such a part of Roark’s character. I lived in Boston in the 70s and Nantucket, the 2 main locales, and Peter Colt nailed them. Can’t wait to read his next book.
Not excellent, but a good sense of place & reasonable character development. There were a couple of weird writing choices: what could easily have been a fairly major shift in the plot was thrown out rather nonchalantly and left undeveloped. A few other loose ends that could have been tighter also. But I enjoyed it overall, enough to read the next in the series (as long as the $ is right).