Shamus Dust rocks along at a terrific pace, with characters and one-liners that can’t help but put you in mind of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. If I had to give this a score, it would be about 90 out of 100, which I guess would translate into 5 stars in normal rankings.
   I only spotted a couple of typos – pretty good by today’s standards. The style is unashamedly US style, with US words and US spellings preferred. This grated a little, as the story is set in 1947 post-war London, and it occasionally forgot itself (eg both ‘cab’ and ‘taxi’ are used). I also thought the book was a little long… but that might just be me. That’s it for the negatives.
   All in all, it’s a very good read. The scene-setting is good; you can visualise the places where the action takes place very easily. For that matter, you can visualise the action very easily. The plot unravels slowly, complicated enough to keep you on the ball, straightforward enough to follow if you keep your thinking cap on. The characters are well drawn, though possibly a bit stereotyped. But it’s the fizz of the writing that’s the biggest plus:
   ‘You never had a wife?’
   ‘I’d have remembered.’
  There’s a nugget on almost every page. And speaking of nuggets:
   In the Dome Room, you eat with enough silver lying about to start another Colorado rush.
   Heh, I’ll remember that one for a while. In fact, I’ll probably remember the book as a whole for a while. It’s pretty clear the author knows what she’s about. The archaeological details are good enough to convince me, and as a chess player of sorts I like the last chapter being called ‘Alekhine in the Endgame.’ A nice note to finish on.
   You can buy Shamus Dust on Amazon, and I imagine in other places too. It’s worth the outlay.