I'm not a fan of detective books. Or, I am; I can be. I don't give much heft for the entire genre, I must say that. But, at the same time, when you have something as beautiful as "The Big Sleep" which has been imitated and loved by millions of people, why not try to love another detective book?

I dig Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon. The canon. I'll probably never find anything like them again, but I'm admittedly not a book-noir maven like some. I dig some Warren Ellis. Some true-crime shit too, as with David Grann.

I liked Obregón's "Blue Light Yokohama", which was in equal parts interesting for its style and language; the former for jumping in time, and the latter for the author using twists and turns that provided thoughts more leaning towards David Foster Wallace than...Marlowe.

"Sins as Scarlet" leans towards the same two paragons as the first book did: you get the hard-boiled, tersely written action, paired with the inner workings of Obregón's protagonist, Inspector Iwata, as well as dense jumps between two different time periods, the 1970s and the todays.

The book wins by being different. Still, this is also why I'll leave the boat; when a formula becomes restrictive enough to choke, that's enough for me; the mechanics used to show that this is really a scene set in the 1970s, that turned all too much. It all made me kind of expect that to spiral lazily, e.g. that there'd be pictures of all things pop-culturesque in the middle of the book.

Anyway, this is a dense ride through the ages, while literally providing a soundtrack for the reader, as Obregón is prone to constantly song-dropping the shit out of every chapter.

This is quite the old-school companion to something like Aidan Truhen's "The Price You Pay", a slightly more eclectic and bubblegum-y detective story. I wish there'd been more Christopher Brookmyre in this book.