Mack Breaks the Case

By: John Holmes

Narrated by: Annabelle Indge

Twenty years in the seaside town of Brighton, England, has given Paz Wheat the notion he’s seen it all as a private investigator. But that’s before young "wild spirit" Alison ("Mack") tumbles bewildered and unannounced into his office. For the buttoned-up Anglo-American there’s nothing more unnerving than a touch of the random, but what does this enigmatic bohemian want? Surely not the job that hasn’t even been advertised yet? It’s a mystery and he dislikes mysteries until they’re solved, and then he loves them.

Thus begins a relationship that changes both: the solitary man wedded to his work and the firebrand living with her long-term girlfriend. Paramount to them are the cases they handle sometimes intricate, always intriguing, like The Chagall Lithograph, The Shadow Yacht, A Box Of Air, and The Everything Man. They investigate strange disappearances–missing persons, but also artworks–and grapple with the trickiest of fraudsters and chancers.

John Holmes has extensive experience working with investigators, loss adjusters, and lawyers. As a social sciences graduate he has a keen interest in the psychology of the private investigator. His previous books include the surrealist Lily Upshire Is Winning–part coming-of-age story, part corporate satire.

©2022 John Holmes (P)2022 John Holmes

Unique Private Investigators

Alison, better known as Mack, stumbles into the office of Paz Wheat one morning. Mistaken as a job applicant and with Lady Luck smiling down on her, Mack is given the job on a whim. Thus begins her career as a Private Investigator assistant. All fine and dandy except the very proper and forever bachelor Paz Wheat must now deal with randomness and chaos. Together they solve some very intricate and dangerous missing person cases and other mysteries.

John Holmes, the author delivers an unusual cast of characters and odd situations they find themselves. As the listener, we are given the front-row seat to relationships and character development. Holmes’ writing style is smooth and easy to follow. The storyline is interesting, and the characters are integral to the plot. While there were a few early characteristics of Mack I did not enjoy as I felt she seemed very shady and could betray Paz at any moment in the beginning I did grow to enjoy her character.

The narrator, Annabelle Indge provided an excellent narration with subtle changes to reflect the character speaking. Her performance was strong and steady, she spoke clearly and with energy. I thought she encompassed the story beautifully. I enjoyed listening to her and thought she was perfect for it.

Overall, an intriguing audiobook with authentic characters and situations that are reflective of the time.

There were no issues with the quality or production of this audiobook.

John Holmes Breaks the Mould

Starting “Mack breaks the Case” I was firmly expecting something much less remarkable. A cosy mystery perhaps, with a dead body at the start… enter the familiar hard-bitten middle-aged detective who is married to his work and drinks too much, backed up by a sexy female sidekick who he’ll doubtless have to rescue from some seen-it-before peril … before getting the mystery all wrapped up at the end. It took me a while to work out that this enchanting book is something Really Very Different.

And what a lovely thing it is! Several things, actually….

One thing is a collection of short stories about private investigations, big and small, being handled for good or otherwise. The cases are themselves a string of little gems. The author clearly knows the territory and each almost self-contained chapter kept me wanting another.

More importantly though, weaving around and through these stories, it is an exquisite portrait of the growing friendship between Paz, our ageing detective, and Mack, the maverick girl he takes on as his assistant - a relationship that is wonderfully crafted and complicated. It is full of uncertainty, ambivalence, contradiction, denial, frustration, yearning, absurdity, impossibility, the sexual tensions between them at once luminous and opaque. Two very different people skating around and past each other, sometimes appearing to slide towards well worn tracks, but always at the last minute veering off again into glorious originality. It's a once off. I loved the journey. These two characters made wonderful company.

And finally – as if the book didn’t have enough already – it had Lily Upshire. Oh how I loved this author’s previous book, Lily Upshire is Winning, in which Lily comes of age through many adventures. And how delicious it was to have her – all grown up now - lurking in the background of this one. I kept wanting her to walk into the narrative, large as life, but the author knew better than that. Mack has been in love with her since the previous book (just as I have) but she can’t really have her (any more than I can). Not in this book anyway. So Lily stays, tantalising, behind the curtain at the back of the stage. But she was there – I tell you, the wonderful Lily Upshire was there all the time.

I listened to the story first as an audio-book (perfectly narrated by Annabelle Indge – what a joy!) and then read it as text because I wanted it again. Pure pleasure, both times.

Coming Of Age Meets PI Work

I just finished Mack Breaks the Case, and overall, I enjoyed the story. John Holmes did a good job writing a compelling narrative that involved the private investigator Paz and his new hire Mack that literally stumbled into his office, Mack.

However, I found Paz’s character to be a bit questionable at times, and it seemed like the author may have purposely made him seem like a less than likable person. I say this because of the inner monologue that Paz had when first meeting Mack and then the scene at Mack’s place where someone was trying to get their job back. I can’t tell if these were put in to “humanize” Paz, make him seem a bit sleazy, or just how Holmes wanted Paz’s character to behave.

On the other hand, the character of Mack is flaky and manipulative. However, she was still likable enough that I wanted to finish the story and would be interested in reading more stories with her as the main focus. I think Holmes did the same with her here as well. Mack would be manipulative one moment and submissive the next. And anytime there was talk about her girlfriend, it seemed like it turned her into a different person.

I feel like I keep calling out the bad things in the book, and that’s not fair. I obviously still enjoyed the heck out of it, as you can see from my rating. I wanted to say that when turning a novel into an audiobook, it is important to provide more guidance for the listener. Chapter titles or an indication of a change in what case(s) they were working on would have been helpful and caused less confusion. The story also jumped around a lot, and they switched cases seemingly quite often. However, it wasn’t enough to completely pull me out of the story. I mention this for the readers, like me, who sometimes do other things while they listen. If you’re someone who sits down and focuses on each word, it won’t be a problem. But if you’re folding laundry or something, I ended up going, “wait, what case are they on” from time to time.

Each case seemed to have its own flair. Each one had a strength for either Mack or Paz, and as the story and their working relationship grew – you could tell that Paz was becoming more and more reliant on the information that Mack was giving. They seemed to start to figure each other out, and it made the last quarter of the story flow off of the pages.

Overall, if some of the confusion and jumping around were cleaned up, this would have been an easy 5-star review. However, because of these issues, the rating came down a bit. Now, this shouldn’t discourage you from reading this. Holmes does a great job writing interesting cases and even more interesting characters (as I spent 2 paragraphs talking about them earlier). But the people they meet and the different schemes, frauds, etc., that they run into made this one stand out.