"Can one man solve the mystery behind his wife's murder?"
Reviewed by Sharon Salituro
Posted May 31, 2018
Thriller P.I.
Jack Pellum, once a detective with the police force, is now a private
detective. He left the force after his wife was murdered, and knew he
had to find the man who murdered his wife. All he knows about this
killer is he wore a crooked hat. Spending his days putting up posters all
over town of this man with the crooked hat, everyone is worried that
Jack is going crazy. But Jack knows if he can get just one good clue, he
will be able to catch this man. Michael Underhill has done so many bad things in his life. But now he is
trying to make a new life with his girlfriend. Lately, things are coming
back to haunt him, and he knows that he has to put an end to it. Meanwhile, Jack meets Paul, who is sure his mother was killed by the
same man that Jack has been hunting. They decide work together to
try and solve both crimes. While investing some of his leads, Jack finds
that there have been several murders around the same time as his wife
and he just knows that they all have a connection. But what could
possibly connect his wife and these other murders? Wow is what I can say about this thriller by Harry Dolan. Dolan really
has a captivating writing style and it shines throughout
THE MAN IN THE CROOKED HAT. I
had no idea how he was going to pull this whole story together, but he
did in a great way. I also enjoyed how he showed that Jack was
determined to not stop until he brought his wife's murderer to justice. There are several side stories in this thriller, but it isn't confusing. I
read this book in like two days. After I was done, so wished I would
have read slower. If you enjoy thrillers, give this one a try.
SUMMARY
One cryptic clue leads a desperate man into a labyrinthine
puzzle of murder in the electrifying new novel from national
bestselling author Harry Dolan. There's a killer, and he wears a crooked hat. Private investigator Jack Pellum has spent two years
searching for the man who he believes murdered his wife--a
man he last saw wearing a peacoat and a fedora. Months of
posting fliers and combing through crime records yield no
leads. Then a local writer commits suicide, and he leaves a
bewildering message that may be the first breadcrumb in a
winding trail of unsolved murders . . . Michael Underhill is a philosophical man preoccupied by
what-ifs and could-have-beens, but his life is finally
coming together. He has a sweet and beautiful girlfriend,
and together they're building their future home. Nothing
will go wrong, not if Underhill has anything to say about
it. The problem is, Underhill has a dark and secret past,
and it's coming back to haunt him. These two men are inexorably drawn together in a mystery
where there is far more than meets the eye, and nothing can
be taken for granted. Filled with devious reversals and
razor-sharp tension, The Man in the Crooked Hat is a
masterwork from "one of America's best new crime writers"
(Lansing State Journal).
ExcerptChapter 1On the shore of the Huron River, Michael Underhill sits in
the grass with his back against a tree. He watches the
sunlight glinting on the water. He listens to the burble of
the current. The woman is next to him, her back against the same tree.
You could see them from the river, if you were out there in
a canoe. But it's late in the season. There's no one on the
water. Underhill picks up a leaf from the ground beside him. "Sometimes I think too much," he says in a quiet voice. "I
remember this thing that happened, an accident. Just dumb. I
was driving to the grocery store on a Saturday afternoon,
coming up to an intersection. I had the green light. There
was a fire truck idling on the cross street. He had the red,
so he was waiting. But he must have gotten a call, because
suddenly he turned on his lights and siren." The leaf is yellow and dry. Underhill twirls it by the stem. "Now I have to decide. Hit the brakes or go on through. It
happened fast, but I remember thinking: This is not
good. I hit the brakes. And I stopped in time, right at
the intersection. But the car behind me didn't. It slammed
into me—I can still remember the sound. The driver was a
kid. I think she was nineteen." He holds the leaf steady and looks at the veins. "No one got hurt, and even the damage to my car wasn't too
bad. I had to take it in and have them replace the bumper
and the tail-lights. The girl's car was worse, but it wasn't
my problem. I wasn't at fault. What the whole thing amounted
to was a bad afternoon and some phone calls to the insurance
company and a week of inconvenience while my car was in the
shop. But I kept thinking about it. It didn't have to
happen. I could have made a different choice. When the
driver of the fire truck turned on his siren, he didn't move
out into the intersection right away. I could have gone
through and there would have been no harm. No damage. No
hassle. So why didn't I go through?" Underhill closes his hand around the leaf and feels it
crumble. The woman is silent beside him. "It still bugs me, even though it happened years ago," he
says. "And this thing today, I know it's going to be the
same. I'm going to wonder if it might have turned out
differently. If I had taken a different tack. If I had
talked to you in a different place. It'll bother me for a
long time. In my defense, I think I handled it pretty well.
I was friendly. You were friendly. We struck up a
conversation. It's broad daylight in a public park. You
shouldn't have been nervous. I didn't think you were
nervous. And I worked my way up to it—to asking you the
question. It wasn't a hard question. There's no reason it
should have made you suspicious. If you had given me a
straight answer, that would have been the end of it. I would
have smiled and gone away. No harm. All you had to do was
tell me the truth." He opens his hand and lets the pieces of the leaf fall to
the ground. "But I could see that you weren't comfortable," he says.
"You didn't trust me. That wasn't right. I didn't deserve
it. And then pretending you didn't remember. That's just
clumsy. Anyone would have seen through that. What was I
supposed to do? Let it go? How could I? By then we'd gone
too far. You were starting to be afraid of me. You shouldn't
have been afraid of me." Underhill gets up from the ground and brushes his hands over
the front of his shirt. A cool wind touches his face. The
woman doesn't stir. Out in the river, a fish breaks the surface of the water. "You shouldn't have been afraid of me," Underhill says again. The woman's camera is lying in the grass where it fell.
Underhill lifts it by the strap, swings it back and forth to
build momentum, and hurls it out into the middle of the river. He returns to the tree and crouches down. He touches a lock
of hair that has fallen over the woman's forehead. He takes
her ear-rings from her ears, takes her wedding band. Throws
them out into the water. They don't go as far, but it's far
enough. He stands on the shore, wondering if there's anything else
he should do. "This is as much on you as it is on me," he says after a
while. "I'm not going to feel bad about this." One last look around. His hat is in the grass. He picks it
up and puts it on his head and walks away.
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