I like to buy used books for $3 or less. For every few stinkers like W.E.B. Griffin Special Ops, I get a gem like Doppelganger by David Stahler, Jr.

The fact that it was $3 should have been a good signal that it would be good. As a counter-example, I await with trepidation a 1066-page $1 copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth.

Doppelganger is a short 258-page read; I finished this book in one week of Muni time. I can’t say much about the plot without spoiling it since the story is very very tight, but the story contains what I would expect a good book noir to contain:

• Enough to make me disappointed that Muni is running on time, for once. For comparison, there were days when I’d rather stand amidst a horde of zombie commuters than work my way through another chapter of Special Ops.
• A nice, tight noir plot, with a complementary completely unresolved ending. Good book noir is everything that formulaic weekly television is not: no episodic stories that are neatly resolved within a neat 30- or 60-minute time slot.

I suppose Doppelganger’s story could be described as putting Smeagol into a John Cusack story, in book form.