Build My Gallows High - SFBA Book Club

Paperback, 153 pages

English language

Published 2001 by Prion.

ISBN:: 978-1-85375-412-8
OCLC Number:: 46361774
ASIN:: 1853754129
Goodreads:: 416700

(1 review)

Retired private eye, Red Bailey, is finally happy in Nevada, spending most of his time fishing and tending his out-of-the-way gas station. Then his past returns to haunt him. Blackmailed into doing just one more job, he is forced to revisit the life from which he had flown. And in particular a woman from his past: the seductive Mumsie McGonigle. Red Bailey soon discovers that the whole affair is a set up — a trap laid just for him with little or no way out.

5 editions

Phil in SF reviewed Build My Gallows High by Geoffrey Homes

The setup baffled me

3 stars

Once the story gets past the beginning chapters and gets into the criminal element in New York, Red Bailey being lined up as a murder suspect there, and then on the run in the Sierra Nevada, it's all fun twists and turns and deception upon deception packed into a mere 153 pages.

The entire setup feels flimsy & convoluted to me. I don't understand what's so special about Mumsie McGonigle that he'd let her go or change his life for her or murder for her, but also not so special that when they split up it's no big deal. Or that he'd not take steps to get rid of evidence that she knows about so that associates of hers can blackmail Red Bailey a decade after the split. But hey, women are mysterious and wiley creatures who magically make men do dumb things, am I right?