No Rest For The Dead

A former San Francisco cop thinks "San Fran was seen as a tolerant place", but is a "city with judging, seeing eyes everywhere." "The hordes of homeless, who took up whole city blocks in the zombie districts, even seemed to judge." Not clear, to me, if the character, Jon Nunn, in No Rest for the Dead was thinking the "judging" people were judging him personally, or others in general.

I did not care for the novel; a woman was executed in the state of California for a murder she may not have committed. In her will she requested a memorial on the tenth anniversary of her death by lethal injection. Characters are introduced, back story told, memorial was held. At first I thought all suspects who might have killed the executed woman's husband, would be assembled in the same room at the memorial, sort of like a Clue game, when readers would learn who really done it.

It was not like that at all. I was confused at the end of the novel, but if I say why, it might spoil the ending for future readers. The book was written by twenty-six authors, which is what prompted me to check it out of the library. I have read some of those authors; none among my favorite mystery writers. Top of my fav list, Walter Mosley was not among them.

The bit about San Francisco's homeless population was penned by Matthew Pearl in Chapter 11. I liked this description: "There were those parts of the city that the tourists pretended not to see on their way to the Golden Gate: The Tenderloin, the Mission, the dark corners of old Chinatown, where the city felt real and feral, like the New York City nobody remembered correctly from the 1970s."

Reminded me of walking the streets of San Fran, creating a desire to visit the city again, missing my old life, photographs and all of that.