Scream Girl Scream

Susannah Screaming by Carolyn Weston

A Netgalley Review

The book from which the TV programme and film ‘Streets of San Francisco’ was derived

I find it interesting that really apart from the occasional mention of triplicate copies and typewriters, how easily this book translates into a modern story. Well crafted stories can stand the test of time, and this is well crafted.

It is a police procedural set, obviously, in San Francisco, around the 1960s with the Haight Ashbury area just setting up shop and parties that take place in strangely decorated homes with funny cigarettes and a distinct lack of forensics – apart from fingerprints and maybe saliva.

We have the now, common, police partners with different personalities and reactions to crime and criminal behaviours.

We have corruption, bullying and some drugs and guns of course, this being the USA. And little understanding of the hippy scene with its tolerances for what was then considered deviant behaviours by the police and other members of society. Much of it centred around the art and music world. And those wannabes who wanted to be part of this hip world but just a little too old and thus considered as not quite one of the scene.

As a well written story I must give it four and if it had been written today I would have given it more for getting the atmosphere of those times right! However, as it was actually written in this era it certainly echoed the sentiments and is worth reading as somewhat of a classic police procedural that set the target for those that followed.