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Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite
Dead Fish Jumping on the Road is a hard-boiled detective mystery novel written by W.L. Liberman. Joe Simpson had worked for the Applewood Gazette for three years now, but Norma Jennings's drowned body was the first death the twenty-six-year-old reporter had covered. She had been partying with Blake Rothwell, the son of a wealthy businessman, on his father’s yacht. Blake had reported her falling overboard the night before they found her body, a troubling number of hours after the young woman had actually fallen into Rattlesnake Bay. Roach’s Point was known for its dangers; one granite shelf had earned the name Dead Man’s Plank for the number of victims it had claimed. Joe figured Norma had gotten caught up in the vortex of currents there and was sucked down into the depths. An odd juxtaposition that one minute the young beauty was drinking and dipping her toes in the water, and then she was gone. It bothered Joe somehow, triggering his own unhappy past: his abusive father who would dive into the bottle and then beat his wife and young son to bloody pulp. The body they found that morning was no longer young-looking nor was it pretty, but he still held onto that image of her as she had been. When Doc Seaton told him Norma had been pregnant, and that he had found an unknown substance in her blood, Joe knew he had to solve the puzzle of her untimely death.
W.L. Liberman’s hard-boiled detective mystery novel, Dead Fish Jumping on the Road, is taut and compelling, and it reads like a dream. Joe Simpson is a grand character; complex, tormented by his past and guilty over his rejection of his mother. His move from the big city and adaptation to life in small-town Applewood, Ontario, is marvelous to follow. I enjoyed seeing his interactions with his boss, Teddy, and police officer, Hal Bigelow, the lumbering man who befriends him and takes him fishing. Liberman’s setting in the 1960s is inspired, and he adroitly contrasts the turbulence of the Vietnam War and growth of the Liverpool music scene with life in the small shore-side town that’s poised on the brink of development. Dead Fish Jumping on the Road is an outstanding literary fiction thriller that kept me enthralled and involved from beginning to end. And while it's a substantial standalone novel, I just can't help but hope to see a sequel -- Liberman’s characters are just too real to let go of after just one book. Dead Fish Jumping on the Road is most highly recommended.