The Scene of the Crime

Very good enjoyed reading it

Great writing, a brilliant story and a character I would like to have seen a regular monthly explore. It is a shame this didn't happen. Is it because a simple crime noir is thought not to be thought provoking or commercial enough? Maybe. However, if you want to sit down and take in a great PI story, buy this. You won't be disappointed. The main character will win you over very quickly. Buy it!

Great noir modern story. Great dialogues, great art. If you like noir and crime novels this is not only for comic book fans but also for other readers. I can't recomend this enough. Buy it now.

A genius film noir story with really good artwork from Lark and inks from Phillips and what's more important you get a sketch by Phillips too! Highly recommend this!

Late 1990s San Francisco is the setting for this crime graphic novel, originally published in 1999 under the title "Scene of the Crime: A Little Piece of Goodnight." The author cites the influence of Ross MacDonald in the afterword, and this definitely carries the feel of one of those bleak 1970s crime stories where the truth is discovered by an intrepid private eye, but there's no happy ending or true justice. The protagonist is Jack Herriman, who works out of an office above his Weegeesque uncle's gallery of crime scene photos. His dead father's old police partner asks him to help a friend track down her missing sister.That simple thread leads him down a twisty path involving a weird sex cult, drugs, a horrific fire from 15 years ago, and lots of dark secrets. (Warning: the plot invovles pedophilia and incest.) It's a bit of a grand tour of the Bay Area, from the Mission District, south to Santa Cruz, north to Santa Rosa, and across the bay to Oakland. Readers will likely be able to work out or guess some of the plot twists, but it's mostly a well-crafted tale that doesn't rely on gimmickry, but rather the consequences of trauma. The artwork is hard-edged and hard-toned, and while not particularly memorable, matches the mood of the story. The paneling is about as vanilla as it gets, unfurling the story in 5-8 strict rectangular shots per page. It is quite wordy, with lots of letting cluttering the panels -- in the afterword, Brubaker admits that he would have written it much more tightly if he were doing it today. All in all, a very effective example of a crime comic that feels like it could be a full novel.

“Scene of the Crime” collects the four-issue Vertigo series, along with a prequel short story from a Vertigo anthology that launched this series back in the 1990s, along with the writer-artist team(s) of Brubaker, Lark & Phillips.I don’t remember reading the original edition of this, but I first discovered Mr Brubaker from his run on Captain America, where after 40 years of waiting, he brought Bucky Barnes back from the dead for me.Anyway, while I prefer Mr Brubaker’s ‘mainstream’ comics, I will read his ‘independent’ books, especially ones with recurring characters. This was sitting in my in tray along with Reckless, and having got the superhero stuff out of the way I started on the independent titles, leading with his “Reckless”, and then went on with this.I won’t make the mistake of not putting his independent work at the top of the pile in future.In the text pages at the back, Mr Brubaker notes that he has slimmed down his use of captions since this was written, and looking at Reckless and this while I type, I can see the difference, though both being of the noir genre, captions are required for voiceovers (as they are with gothic stories), and this was definitely a long read due to the density of said captions – but they didn’t slow the pace of the book; this was still a proper comic-book with the art carrying the ‘descriptive’ part of the story, and the captions giving the protagonist’s thinking, and the two fitting seamlessly together.Even after all these years, the quality of this work still shows.

I finally get round to reading this, the work that apparently helped put all three of these guys on the map.Its an interesting short run covering a multiple murder mystery. I enjoyed it overall and can't help but feel I've read this main character before (Jack Herriman) Could of course just be that I am starting to recognise traits that brubaker put in many of his characters.Anyway, back to the point, I solved the mystery about half way through (how did you do?) and enjoyed the rest of the book just the same.The short at the end is fine but nothing to write home about.Overall a nice book to have for any Crime, Murder Mystery or Ed Brubaker fan to have in their collection.

Brubaker has written his take on the P.I. murder case. Despite it being set in the present (this series was originally published in 2012) the feel of the story and the artwork harks back to the classic Noir of Dashiell Hammett (who is mentioned during the story). This is a multi-layered story with plenty of twists and turns and has a lot of depth to it. This is not a story that you can quickly flick through and much attention to the details of the plot, as well as the artwork, is needed here.Jack Herriman is a tortured soul and has lived through many dips in his short life (eyewitness to his father's murder as well as fighting against dependency on drink and drugs), but Jack feels a genuine and honourable man. I think it is this that made me rout for him. I loved the character of his uncle Knut, a famous news and crime scene photographer, who partners Jack for part of his investigation. I do not know if Brubaker has more cases for Herriman, but it would be interesting to see how he develops as a detective and as a man. 'Scene of the Crime' is an extremely gripping read. The hardback edition also features an extra Herriman story as well as cover art. A marvellous addition to any library.