Shaved Fish consists of 10 short stories, each of which is a case taken on by Syd Fish. Short and sharp, for the most part these cases involve missing persons, sometimes a runaway child or wife, although the theme occasionally varies with custody disputes involving family pets. A more serious case involves an investigation of a suspicious death requiring some real honest to goodness dangerous work. The book ends with a case that provides us with a completion of the circle, returning to the characters introduced in the opening story with Syd being employed for a surveillance job that will bring him in contact with his former boss, the politician who abruptly fired him and set him on his present path.

Syd takes on this string of cases with varying levels of success that I found held an equally varied level of interest. His methods run along the lines of taking on the job with very little to go on, make a few cursory inquiries before turning to his friend at the newspaper, Lizzy Darcy. As Fish explains, Lizzy knows something about everyone and it is with her valuable help he usually picks the trail up quickly.

The detective work involved here is the fairly typical leg-work interviewing relatives, friends and acquaintances in the hopes that a lead will surface. While this should form a basis for an interesting story, all too often, I found that the stories never really progressed far beyond that point. In fact, it seemed a large proportion of the stories suffered the same problem of a lack of a satisfying ending.

Each case builds rather quickly setting up a promising premise but too often comes to an abrupt ending, the majority of the time leaving a sense that there was still unfinished business left still to be resolved. I would have preferred that the stories were given more time to unfold rather than the vague feeling that I was cheated out of a satisfying ending time and again.

That being said, Syd Fish is a likable protagonist, sufficiently humble to admit that he needs a lot of help to solve his cases. The story is told in a clipped tone that doesn't waste time with unnecessary detail, just the bare facts that are essential to furthering the plot. This promoted a fast pace and it felt like we were always getting somewhere in each case, something that I prefer when reading a mystery. The tone of the narration was consistently light too, even when interrupted with more delicate and serious situations, it didn't take long before a humorous quip or observation rescued the mood.

Shaved Fish is the first book in the Syd Fish series and while I thought it held a lot of potential with enjoyable characters and the bones of interesting plots, it just seemed to fall short when it came to following through to deliver an enjoyable ending. My feelings are that there was enough potential to give the other books in the series - Dogfish and Shark Bait - a try.