Easy Death
Daniel Boyd
Hard Case Crime
paper $9.95
electronic $7.99

If you’ve been looking for some Christmas noir, then look no further. Daniel Boyd’s tale of an armored car heist gone wrong is the perfect stocking stuffer. And you shouldn’t wait until Christmas to open. The book, that is.

It’s December 20, 1951, and Eddie and Walter are planning on pulling off an armored car heist in the middle of snow storm. It’s a chancy thing to do, but it goes down without a hitch. The the other shoes start dropping.

The weather makes driving the getaway car difficult. The plan to cut through a National Park runs into a snag when they encounter a crazed Ranger who has had too much to drink and is a crack shot.

Plus there’s the police hot on their tail, not to mention their boss, who is doesn’t have much patience and isn’t very understanding about things going wrong.

Daniel Boyd is a pseudonym of a career police officer. Easy Death is his second novel. His first, ‘Nada, was nominated for a Spur Award by the Western Writers of America. He tells a compelling tale.

Many of the chapters are short, and the viewpoint shifts between different characters. This allows Boyd to tell the entire story of the heist and how it affects people other than Eddie and Walter. The result is a more effective tale. The effect is heighten by the approach of initially alternating the chapters so that we bounce backwards and forwards in time around the heist, slowly approaching it while also putting distance between the characters and the events.

Boyd does a superb job of fleshing out his characters, even the minor ones. Eddie is white and Walter black, but their friendship isn’t forced. Nor does Boys use it to beat the reader over the head with a Message. They’re both decent men who have made some bad choices. They don’t blame anyone, even society, for the roles they find themselves playing, but accept the responsibility that accompanies their actions.

The result is a pair of flawed men the reader sympathizes with and roots for even when their goals aren’t honorable.

This is very much a Christmas story. While the main action could take place at any time during the winter (the snowstorm is crucial to the plot), the Christmas aspects add a depth to the tale. And I liked how Boyd interlaced lyrics from Christmas songs in some of the chapters. (No, kiddies, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer wasn’t around in the 50’s.)

If Daniel Boyd continues to write like this, he’ll make a name for himself in the field of noir. If you’re nice, maybe Santa will bring you a copy of Easy Death for Christmas.

Read an excerpt here.