THE MAN IN THE CROOKED HAT, Harry Dolan’s latest mystery, sinks the hook from the first page and leads the reader --- step by step, word by word --- in a forest that is at first dim, then dark, and always unsettling.

The book is focused primarily on a haunted ex-detective named Jack Pellum, who we meet 18 months after the strangulation murder of his wife, Olivia. Pellum’s reason for leaving the Detroit police force is simple: He was not permitted to investigate Olivia’s death. Now a private investigator, Pellum takes the occasional divorce case but regards such endeavors as a distraction from his real work, which is his obsessive search for Olivia’s killer. He is sure that he saw the culprit just a few days before her body was found. While he doesn’t have much to go on --- the man’s style of crookedly wearing a fedora is his only distinguishing feature --- it doesn’t stop him from posting handbills with a drawing of the man and Pellum’s contact information throughout the area.

"THE MAN IN THE CROOKED HAT, Harry Dolan’s latest mystery, sinks the hook from the first page and leads the reader --- step by step, word by word --- in a forest that is at first dim, then dark, and always unsettling."

Pellum’s (sort of) understandable obsessiveness pays off when he is contacted by a young man named Paul Rook, who believes that his mother was murdered by a man who matches the same vague description. Rook doesn’t bring much to the search, other than an obsession that matches Pellum’s own, but that’s enough. The pair begins with an extremely thin lead, that being a suicide message from a local author that mentions a man in a crooked hat. It develops that the dead author had a brother who himself was murdered. Pellum and Rook’s investigation widens geographically and into the past as well, as they discover both more and less than they originally anticipated.

Meanwhile, the killer has paused his activity for the best of reasons. He hasn’t entirely stopped, though, and is very much aware of Pellum’s activities. Pellum soon learns he is being watched, and receives a threat that makes it crystal clear that his investigation must be brought to an end. However, it just makes him all the more determined to find the monster who ended his wife’s life and may also end his.

I started to recommend THE MAN IN THE CROOKED HAT to a friend of mine who quickly told me that he no longer reads serial killer novels. Let me state at the outset that this isn’t quite one of those. Readers familiar with Dolan’s work know to expect the unexpected from him. He is a master at letting readers make their own predictable assumptions and then toying with them for a bit. What makes the reading experience even more enjoyable is Dolan’s wonderful characterization. Pellum is a sympathetic character who never quite becomes a likable one, but gets within striking distance of it. This is a book that, once you start it, you will want to finish without delay or excuse. You undoubtedly will find a way to do so.