kim’s review + qc excerpt

Tower Motel is a classic crime noir set in a small Illinois town.  The story is narrated by, Darlene Englund, an uneducated, cynical maid at the motel.  Darlene shares her opinions of the hotel owners, families, and guests.  In addition, she also provides them some additional hospitality services of her own.  While somewhat humbly considering herself just doing her job or being a good-deed doer, she eventually falls prey to her greed.

Through Darlene Englund, Larry Stanfel captures a dysfunctional level of small-town life but laces the story with sardonic humor to make a fun read.

–Kim Bunner

Parlin-Ingersoll Public Library

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Whenever something he’d bought didn’t work or didn’t work just right, Dad had a regular fit and yelled that we need better quality control. He may still, but I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for a while, but probably he does, because he never changed very much in any way, so I imagine he hasn’t in that one, either. He read something about it in a magazine at a doctor’s office and went crazy over it: quality control this, quality control that. Apparently Americans invented it but forgot how to do it. Dad says only the Japs do quality control right. Well, I pointed out to him how I had a Seiko watch that didn’t last for a year, but he said it was probably made in China. I said I supposed Betty Selkirk’s Honda which fell apart after six months was made in China, and he said, no, it was probably made in the U.S., because now the Japs were taking over our country with their factories.