Book Review: Henry Wood Detective Agency By Brian D Meeks

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This is first in a planned three books on Henry Wood by Meeks.  It was a strange wee read, but not in a bad strange way.

Henry Woods is a Private Investigator who likes, when not investigating, to dabble in woodwork, he lives and works in New York and the year is 1955, just....

While recovering from New Year celebrations in his office, a woman enters; her father is missing and she needs Henry to find him..

As it turns out a second female client also has a father who is also missing and Henry has good vibes about one but not the other.  The missing fathers are an accountant and the other an inventor and Henry soon finds that their disappearance is linked with, it is alleged, the accountant having been keeping a secret coded journal on one of New York's mobster family Bosses...

Everyone is looking for both men, the journal and the codex that will unlock the information, and as the boss of the family is not liked by the other bosses who sense a weakness, this starts a killing war around the city with the other families trying to weaken and be ready to take over Tommy The Knife's area, if and when the DA and police get a hold of the journal and the codex.  Tommy will either be dead, or in prison.....It's a race to find it and the codex and of course the missing men while trying to stay out of the firing line and remain alive in the process....

The strangeness of the book comes in the form of a cupboard in Henry's woodworking workshop, nearly every time he opens the cupboard he finds things.  Clues to the case, objects and books from the future, including a DVD on cabinet making (if memory serves) but I wasn't clear if he got the player to go with it, but the whole thing is not fully explained.  I have spoken with Mr Meeks on Twitter and he informs me that all will be revealed in future books as to how  this arose and why,  and all will become clear.

So, we have a murder mystery suspense book set in 1955 with a bit of 'time travel' thrown in with these 'strange objects' and messages appearing inexplicably from the future. We have a real estate agent who after Henry's office is burned down is ready and waiting to rent him a new office, an office with an address on a business card that is given to Henry, while he is still in the first office, but do you know what, as strange and as disconcerting as the lack of understanding for these things occurring, it did not detract from the overall flow of the story of a detective trying to track down a couple of missing men while being dogged by the mob.  There were a couple of interesting characters the mob lieutenant Sal, for one and I loved this bit, a great line, 'Sylvia's expression was easy to read, so Sal continued, “My day job is being a thug; by night, I am a secret literary critic who saves people from poor prose." '

This isn't a long read lasting only for 212 pages, formatting on ipad and Kindle seemed fine and I had no real issues with it. There were a couple of spelling / grammatical/ missing words, three, I think,  that stood out, which I'm sure will be fixed in an update.  Over all a good read and he has probably dragged me back in to find out how and why the time travelling objects are appearing and their overall significance to Henry

Editing for Kindle: 4 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Plot: 4 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

You can connect with Mr Meeks at:  https://twitter.com/ExtremelyAvg
and on his web site at: http://extremelyaverage.com/