Things just can’t get any worse for Antonio Mercer. He is a private eye by trade, and a dame from his past has re-surfaced in his life as a client along with all of the emotional baggage he thought he’d left behind forever. Of course, this unusual client doesn’t have just any case – her family is mixed up with seriously dangerous people and the body count is just starting to pile up!
Too often crime fiction feels like a period piece. Like the author is a child playing dress-up and the era is her parents’ clothes. The shoes clomp, the sleeves are too long, and the fit is just off. It’s my belief that the mystery/crime genre is largely a conservative one, or at the very least is going through a conservative phase. One where past settings or evocations of past times are increasingly more common. Rather than inundate the reader with loads of researched facts that scream look-at-all-the-research-I-did, or throw a tantrum with oh-my-God-I-wish-I-wrote-for-Gold-Medal half-baked pulp theatrics, You Have Killed Me feels much more naturalistic and less forced.
Without wanting to pinpoint any one thing exactly, this book hits all the right notes in creating a great overall atmosphere. From the cold noir opening with our confused and bloodied protag on through the jazz clubs, back room poker games and fringes of high society, it just exudes a higher comfort level and provides a great setting to tell the story.
The story itself has the feel of the familiar but winds up confounding expectations. We know the character types – the beat PI, the dame from his past, the jazz player, the dandy – yet they feel fresh and alive.
The art is clean and neat and sometimes brilliant, using a few different techniques to create various desired effects. For example, look at this panel that employs a technique from old movies – someone driving a car with a moving picture in the background to simulate place or movement. Here it’s familiar but fresh all at the same time.
Jones eschews the blocky thrust of Frank Miller-inspired crime art and comes away with an elegance of style. She also places the characters in a prominent place so they aren’t overshadowed by stylized flourishes.
Joelle Jones’s art is, quite frankly, so damn good here that she has set the benchmark for all future crime artists to beat.
You Have Killed Me is like a classic noir movie in comic form and is certainly one of the best crime comics of the year.
A large preview can be found here.
