Anne Argula

Quinn - Menopausal PI, ex-cop, Seattle, Washington
(Jump to read a review of Krapp's Last Cassette)

"Walla Walla Suite (A Room with No View) "

(Reviewed by Guy Savage DEC 28, 2007)

"I’ll admit that I really don’t understand our justice system. I’ve never met anyone who does, not really. The process of the system has long overtaken the purpose of it. Justice is not the goal. I know everyone says that, but then what is the goal? The goal is the process to be followed, and if justice happens, cool; if it’s injustice that occurs, well, that’s a pity, but at least the proper steps were followed."

Walla Walla Suite by Anne Argula

Walla Walla Suite from author Anne Argula is the second mystery novel featuring hard-edged, middle-aged Quinn. Quinn, once had a life in Spokane, but after her husband, Connor dumped her for a younger woman, Quinn retired from the police force and headed for Seattle. Here she’s created a new life, or at least what passes for a new life. Struggling to establish a PI business, Quinn accepts piecework from Vince Ainge, a softhearted mitigation investigator who has an office in the same building. When Eileen, a young girl who also works in the building disappears, Quinn is hired by the girl’s distraught boss to find her. The case becomes extremely complicated when Vince is subsequently hired to help Eileen’s accused killer avoid the death penalty. Before you can say ‘conflict of interest,’ Quinn finds herself up to her neck in intrigue.

Quinn suffers from hot flushes, she experiences twinges of fading sexuality, but what I loved about this character is her sheer unemotional approach to life. Always in control, savvy Quinn is a great character, and her wry perceptions of human nature—tempered with observations of the sometimes-sordid emotional somersaults of the romantically obsessed, make for a riveting read.

Quinn is the sort of woman men overlook, while labeling them as ‘good sports,’ and true to this definition, Quinn sometimes assumes jobs that others reject. At one point in the novel, she even attends an execution, as Vince cannot stomach the event. Quinn, a hardened ex-cop, a person who’s seen it all, and heard every excuse in the book, still manages to be a credible and wonderfully non-judgmental character. To her there are good guys and bad guys—she has no problem with that, but she accepts the gray areas with a slightly pessimistic world-weary eye.

While Quinn has no illusions about the rehabilitation of the perennial sickos of Seattle, she has occasion to question the purpose of the justice system through the pitiful story of the childhood of a career criminal. Let me make it clear here—Quinn as an ex-cop is expected to have a certain attitude towards crime, and yes, while she does have that attitude, it’s tempered by her life experiences and also by events that occur in the novel. These experiences don’t cause Quinn to undergo a sea change—as a matter of fact, she doesn’t always understand Vince’s devotion to saving a murderer from the death penalty, but when she’s exposed to a heinous story regarding the upbringing of a career rapist, Quinn’s reaction is one of disgust. When the career rapist first appears, he is depicted as one of the lowest forms of human life, and yet by the time he tells his tale, Quinn recognizes that he is a dangerous product of an even lower form of life. Quinn doesn’t have much faith in humanity, but the little that she has is rocked to the foundations by the rapist’s revelations. No believer in social rehabilitation, Quinn experiences an almost unwilling acceptance of the fact that crime and perversion often create layers of criminality.

As a PI, an ex-cop, and as a middle-aged menopausal woman, she is often dismissed by those she meets, but Quinn’s quiet confidence and scant need for ego gratification, coupled with her low-key sense of humor, and sharp unemotional vision result in a protagonist we care about. Here’s Quinn’s view of another tenant in the building, Bernard, an ex-gangbanger from LA now a “respectable ticket-scalper”:

“He’s outgoing, Bernard, and likable, slick and wiry, the kind of kid bigger thugs like to use to break into a store via the air vent. He struck up a conversation with me and in no time told me that things were too hot for him in Los Angeles so he boogied up north and fell in love with the city. What he meant, I think, was that Seattlites were at heart naïve and it was easy for him to make a semi-legitimate living. Anyway, after that, whenever he saw me he would treat me like a friend, and so I treated him the same way. He knows I’m an ex-cop and he thinks that’s hysterical for some reason, like we’ve both turned over a new leaf.”

I can only hope that "Anna Argula" (pen name of veteran author Darryl Ponicsan who wrote The Last Detail in 1971) gives us many more novels in this series. This was my introduction to Quinn, and I picked up the novel not realizing that Walla Walla Suite was the second of the series. The fact that I hadn’t read the first novel didn’t hinder my enjoyment in the least. But after I turned the last page, I decided that I wanted to hang out with Quinn for a while longer, and so, I bought a copy of the first one in the series, Homicide My Own.

  • Amazon readers rating: from 7 reviews

Read a chapter excerpt from Walla Walla Suite at Random House


(back to top)

Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)

 

(back to top)

Book Marks:

 

(back to top)

About the Author:

Anne Argula is a pen name used by Darryl Ponicsan. He was born in Northeast Pennsylvania.

Homicide My Own is about a cop who solves his own murder from a previous life. It was nominated for an Edgar Award.

He currently lives in Seattle, Washington.

MostlyFiction.com About Us | Subscribe | Review Team | History | ©1998-2010 MostlyFiction.com