Backstory

Backstory by William L. Myers, Jr.
6/7/23; 320 pages
Oceanview Publishing

Backstory by William L. Myers, Jr. is a recommended contemporary noir mystery.

Bob, Jackson Robert Hunter, had his head smashed against a brick wall by some unknown person and can't quite remember who he is. He's in a bar where people know him, so he knows his name is Bob. He gradually pieces together clues and memories. He lives in Kansas. His Wife, Helen has recently died by suicide. He can't remember what his job is or who his co-workers are. He does slowly recover memories of Helen and begins to believe that his wife was murdered. This memory and other clues eventually lead him to Philadelphia and his secret past.

This is a compelling narrative and readers will be sympathetic to Bob's search for answers. He is a complicated character with a complicated past. Readers will sympathize with Bob at the start of the novel, but Meyers will quickly show that he is a more perplexing and troublesome character than he appears to be at the start. The novel quickly turns from a noir to a thriller as Bob looks into his past to try and solve who killed Helen.

As a reviewer it was admittedly a struggle at times to read Backstory because it was slow paced at the beginning and the advanced reading copy was missing complete words and/or letters so I had to piece together clues from the text that was there to figure out what was what. This won't be in the final published edition, but it does inhibit an ease of reading comprehension for an advanced reviewer. The plot does pick up the pace and quickly becomes engrossing in the final chapters in the novel.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Oceanview Publishing via Edelweiss.