BLACK STOCKINGS - RED BLOOD: A Crime Noir Novel

by John R. Stuart

There’s a deranged serial killer haunting the streets of Paris in 1946, killing women that collaborated with the Germans during WW2, extracting retribution in the most horrible fashion. Bitter and battle-scarred US Military Police, Captain Warren Cayne is assigned the daunting task of investigating the death of a US soldier that has been killed by the serial killer and he falls into a case that will involve Nazi war criminals, ex-resistance fighters, and black marketers. Cayne is an ex-marine, now strung out on speed, with only six months until he is discharged from the Army, will he be able to survive the deadliest case of his career? Can he apprehend the vicious serial killer and solve the Nazi Odessa mystery that he has fallen into?In the tradition of classic noir thrillers such as - The Odessa File, China Town, The Big Sleep, and The Maltese Falcon.

136 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 29, 2017

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.
This book, what can I say? The premise of it sounded very promising and so I was quite excited to read it. The story is interesting but the editing is abysmal. Almost every page there is a spelling mistake, grammatical error, etc that just got to be a complete distraction. Coco Channel??? She is mentioned as one of the AMERICAN in crowd of Paris!! First off, she was French and her name is CHANEL!! Just one example of hundreds of errors that should have been edited out.
I was so disappointed in this book...perhaps a good run through by an editor would make this a more appealing read.

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've had this book on a list for a while. I love noir and the premise seemed really worth reading. The story is set in 1946 and the first line is the guys waiting for beer 30. That threw me off immediately. There was no beer 30 in 1946, but I kept reading for a while. The writing didn't get any better. A few more pages in and the MC goes into a room and states “this looks like the room of a whore” which is incredibly poor writing because there was nothing to back that up. What does the room of a whore look like. There was no description. I think there would be lots of perfume. Maybe some scantily underwear or something, but nothing that gave us any idea of where this assessment was coming from. I just couldn't do it anymore. I was incredibly disappointed. I did not finish the book and I probably won't pick up anymore from this author. I don't like how the book was formatted, but that's a that's not a reason to give a low score. IT does add to the fact that this author didn’t take his work to a more professional level. The premise had potential. This felt like a rough draft to me. Someone who should have spend more time developing this into multiple drafts. I wrote this and now I need to go back and I need to give those descriptions like what's this room looks like. Those anachronisms such as beer 30 just ruined the whole book and I couldn't handle it anymore. A period piece should make feel like I am in that epoch. I'm not one to put down a book that I bought, but this needs work,