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Critic's Corner
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DETECTIVES DON'T WEAR SEATBELTS McNair, author of three novels, has worked as a news writer, on-air newscaster, and producer of documentaries. She now offers a memoir that takes you undercover into the life of a female private investigator. Today, McNair heads her own private investigation firm, Green Star Investigations. When McNair found herself divorced, broke, and camping out in a borrowed apartment in New York City, the most obvious choice of employment seemed to her to become a private investigator, one of her lifelong dreams. That is exactly what she did. Her first interview for a job was with a seasoned P.I. named Bo Dietl. She came away from that meeting deflated feeling like a Girl Scout offering a cookie to a man who's just announced he's a cannibal. No, she didn't get the job. A month of rejections followed. Then, Vinny Parco a.k.a. "Poison" offered her a job and she took it. Vinny's firm is loaded with characters Damon Runyon would have loved. Every few chapters McNair details some of her previous amazing travels. This lady has been just about everywhere and done things few people, man or woman, would dare. Mombassa, Rome, Hong Kong, Tripoli, Lisbon, Montevideo, and these exotic places are but a few of our adventurous author's travels. She discusses eating caviar in Tehran with a witty gunrunner to admiring icebergs in Tierra del Fuego, and eating banana and honey sandwiches at midnight in the Casbah in Tangiers. McNair has done all these and more. After her work hours are cut due to a slow down at Vinny's, McNair decides on a trip home to Turtle Creek, Mississippi to visit her mother. Mom welcomes her globe-hopping daughter with open arms. While at home, McNair takes a part-time job with a local P.I. firm, Lyndon Investigations. They only offered her six dollars an hour plus twenty-cents a mile. Since she was in full reverse financially, she was elated to find the work. As it turned out, Lyndon had been a homicide detective with the Jackson police force and knew his stuff. He turned out to be a good teacher. McNair writes about her growing up years in Mississippi in the 50s and 60s. Her daddy was a "hating" man. He hated Catholics and Jews, Episcopalians, Italians, liberals, the Irish, everyone who lived in New York City, the French, the Pope, de segregationists, Mexicans, and others too numerous to mention. Her mother was an opposite type. Daddy is a doctor and "tight as the bark on a tree," when it came to spending money on his family, but had his shirts hand made in Hong Kong, and shoes made of alligator in Argentina. Mother kept daddy's business books, and balanced the bank statements for the medical practice. She did this because he didn't want others to know how much money he made. The "Doc" demanded, threatened, taunted, and bullied as the McNair women survived quietly with backup plans and strategy behind a veil of secrets like some resistance army. Such was Cici McNair's growing-up years. Now, as an adult with two brothers and a sister, here she was back in Mississippi remembering the time not so long ago when her mother and siblings, aunts and uncles, held a family reunion and didn't invite her! When she'd had all she could take of "home" she announced she was ready to return to New York. The time at home wasn't wasted, indeed it was enlightening to remember. Her mother had devoted her very life to an abusive husband and somehow survived emotionally in tact. He ultimately divorced her, remarried, and died soon after without ever really getting to know his daughter Cici . . . She'd withdrawn from him for years and he'd never noticed. Mississippi was her mother's adventure but not Cici's — her world was much, much larger. So, it was back to the Big Apple and to work once more for Vinny Parco for a few cases. Her next job was a full-time position with Parker Investigations. Here she completed her education on how to be a real working P.I. The firm worked with local police, U.S. Customs, OCID, the FBI and Joint Terrorist Task Force. Most of the P.I.'s were ex-cops, and Cici was the only woman. McNair states that detectives are skeptics, paranoid, and they gossip like mad when they're not putting two and two together on their own. It's an exciting, but dangerous life. However, McNair isn't all work and no play. She tells of trips with handsome adventurous men in exotic places all over the world. Then, there were the trips to Kabul, Italy, Haiti, etc., where sometimes she also met men in not so run-of-the- mill occupations. All in all, Cici McNair has lived a life that more than qualifies her to be a writer as well as a P.I. She met famous people, everyday people, but no uninteresting types were ever drawn to this moth's flame. To say I enjoyed this memoir is an understatement — I loved it. You will, too. McNair's story is a thrill ride and beyond all reasonable doubts she proves "Detectives Don't Wear Seatbelts." Copyright 2009, Patricia Ann Jones Buy Detectives
Don't Wear Seatbelts Patricia Ann Jones is a published writer and has recently retired from her position of 18 years as a reviewer for the Tulsa World newspaper. To comment on this review you may email pattij777@aol.com. |
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