Firstly my thanks to Emma over at Damp pebbles blog tours for having me on the blog tour. I have previously been on a blog tour for one of Leopold’s books Mama’s Gone from the Lagotti family series. The case is a stand-alone read following Private investigator Jack Adkins or as he is known to almost everyone Jake. I shall however let you take a look at the blurb before I start rambling on.

ONE PRIVATE EYE, ONE CASE , ONE SACKFUL OF TROUBLE. 

When Jake agrees to take a package across America, he doesn’t know if he’ll live to tell the tale. If the CIA, the Feds and the British Secret Service don’t get to him then the Mob will. How’s a cowardly private dick going to survive in these bloody times?

The Case is a stand-alone Pulp Noir Novel. A wry take on the jaw-dropping violent side of private investigator life by Leopold Borstinski, writer of the six-book Lagotti family series. 

How exactly will Jake survive these bloody times? Well let me tell you ……… okay so I wont actually tell you what happens exactly and totally spoil it all for you, to actually find out you will need to pick up a copy but I can tell you what I think.

Now I will hold my hands up and say it actually took me a few chapters to realise what was going on, until it clicked into place I was a bit confused. But we start off in Nevada in 1979 as Jake tells us about a case he was working on, we then travel back to 1961 and this time we are in New York and Jake has a meeting with the Don Michael Lambretti, a man you don’t want to get on the wrong side of or you could end up swimming with the fish. Borstinski takes us on a real journey as we follow Jake carrying out his case but also looking back over his previous cases and what shaped him into the kind of guy he is. We get a real sense of each case and what life was really like for a private eye behind the scenes and well at points you almost feel like you are next to Jake. Borstinski leaves no stone unturned and gets right down to telling us every nitty gritty detail and doesn’t skim on the violence either. As we follow Jake through America during the late 1940’s to the 1990’s we get a real sense of the type of guy he is and a real sense of him as a character plus his outlook on relationships. At one point well actually a few points even though I though Jake was an okay type of guy his morals are not always right. He doesn’t really care how he makes his money – the more greens he can make the better and he likes the ladies whether single or taken. Through Jake’s telling’s of his previous jobs we get to see how he ended up involved with the Mob boss that is Don Lambretti in the first place and each time his name was mentioned I felt a slight chill and fear of what was going to happen next, perhaps something to do with how Lambretti conducts his business with the guys knocking at your door and escorting you to meet him in their black American cars.

You can see how it got its name The Case, everything revolves around the biggest case that Jake is on or his previous cases. Pulp Noir Fiction is not my usual genre and not really a book I would have perhaps picked up in a shop but then I would have missed out. With The Case we have it all pretty much, its dark and gritty, we have violence, sex, drugs and some really graphic scenes throughout each chapter. Borstinski really does have a way with words and another one of his books I have enjoyed reading.

Reading different genres was something I really wanted to try this year and Emma has threw a few different ones my way, I always get worried when I say yes to a blog tour for a book that is a bit different and sometimes out my comfort zone but after the first few chapters, I got really invested in The Case and like with Mama’s Gone really enjoyed it, I like the way Borstinski writes, he doesn’t beat round the bush and gives it to us straight even if it is a bit Omg did that just actually happen.  If you do read The Case then you may have the same reaction to me at one of  the chapters ; you will know what I am on about it when you get to it as I don’t want to give too much away. This particular chapter however was on of those that did hit a bit of a nerve and I just wanted to appear alongside Jake and tell him not to get help and save the guy because he deserved all the punishment he was getting and I would have gladly helped dish it out.

Anyway just rambling on now, today is the last day of the blog tour and I’ve enjoyed being part of it, If you haven’t seen the other reviews but want to check them out I will pop the blog tour poster below and you can go check out the other great bloggers who came before me. I know I will be, can’t wait to see what the other bloggers thought. I try not to read them before I type up my review. So to briefly sum up : Its dark, gritty, violent , full of graphic descriptions and a fair amount of sex.