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Summary
Summary
Lovable everyman Lew Fonesca, the man who makes things work in Sarasota, takes on the case of 17 year-old Ronnie Graeill accused of bludgeoning to death an eccentric wealthy politician whose most recent crusade was against a college financial-aid program.
Author Notes
Stuart M. Kaminsky is head of the radio/television/film department at Northwestern University in Illinois. He is also a writer of textbooks, screenplays, and mystery novels.
The more popular of his two series of detective novels features Toby Peters. Set in the 1930s and 1940s, the Peters books draw on Kaminsky's knowledge of history and love of film by incorporating characters from the film industry's past in nostalgic mysteries. Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (1978), for example, features Judy Garland while Catch a Falling Clown (1982) stars Emmett Kelley as Peters's client and Alfred Hitchcock as a murder suspect.
His other critically acclaimed series chronicles the cases of Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov. Kaminsky's detailed studies of Russian police procedure combined with aspects of life in Russia have earned the Series an Edgar nomination for Black Knight in Red Square (1984) and the 1989 Edgar Award for A Cold Red Sunrise (1988).
Stuart Kaminsky was born in Chicago in 1934 and died in 2009.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of the superb sixth Lew Fonesca hard-boiled whodunit (after 2006's Always Say Goodbye) from MWA Grand Master Kaminsky, 17-year-old Greg Lagerman, a student at a school for the gifted, hires Fonesca, who's been working as a process server in Sarasota, Fla., since losing his wife to a hit-and-run driver in Chicago, to exonerate a friend, 17-year-old Ronnie Graell. Graell stands accused of bludgeoning to death an eccentric wealthy politician whose most recent crusade was against a college financial-aid program. Given that the bloodstained suspect was found next to the corpse, Fonesca has his work cut out for him. The gumshoe's initial probes soon place him in the crosshairs of an unknown assailant. Kaminsky provides enough twists and turns to keep most readers guessing, but the book's power comes from the compelling portrayal of Fonseca, who still suffers emotionally from his wife's death, but continues to strive to move forward. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The important thing to know about Lew Fonesca, one of Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Kaminsky's series characters, is that he is a depressive detective who drove as far south as his car could make it four years ago, after his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Chicago. Since arriving in Sarasota, Florida (five novels ago), Fonesca has worked as a process server specializing in finding people. Like all depressives, Fonesca is hard to get and keep going, a major flaw in the series. And he doesn't seek business it literally shows up on his doorstep, like his wife's killer who inexplicably now sleeps on his office floor. This latest episode centers on two high-school kids who ask Fonesca to look into the murder of a local rich guy; one of their friends has been charged. The plot, like Fonesca, works by fits and starts, with plenty of strained dialogue and odd characterization. For commited readers of the series only.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Who bakes the bread in a war zone? Who's left to give the brides away? Who investigates civilian crimes like robbery and murder? These are the kinds of questions posed by J. Robert Janes, in a brilliant series of policiers set in Vichy France during the German occupation, and now taken up by Matt Beynon Rees, a former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time magazine, in his provocative mysteries set in the Palestinian territories of today. Like Janes, Rees adopts a humanist perspective, keeping the military maneuvers in the background and focusing on ordinary people struggling to live ordinary lives. In a culture that thinks of terrorist bombers as martyrs, Rees's modest protagonist, an aging Palestinian schoolteacher named Omar Yussef, is no one's idea of a hero. But in two previous books, "The Collaborator of Bethlehem" and "A Grave in Gaza," this decent man proved his courage by daring to keep an open mind in a closed society. THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET (Soho, $24) finds Omar Yussef in Nablus, helping his friend Sami Jaffari, a lieutenant with the national police, investigate the theft of a priceless Torah scroll (said to be the oldest book in the world) from a Samaritan sect's synagogue. The mystery deepens when the son of the Samaritan priest is found murdered outside the sacred temple at the top of Mount Jerizim. Both Sami and Omar Yussef find themselves in turbulent political waters when they learn that the victim was the personal financial adviser to the late Palestinian president and was involved in the embezzlement of millions of dollars in Western aid. That sleight of hand has now brought to Nablus an official of the World Bank, who threatens to cut off all further financing if the money isn't found. Rees takes Omar Yussef into every nook and cranny of this ancient city, from the tunnels of the old souk to the mansions on Mount Jerizim built by the ruling elite, who have left their palaces in the casbah "in the penniless, desperate hands of the poor." Finding opinionated characters wherever he goes, the scholarly sleuth is careful, but not cowed. He tries persuasion on a young Hamas soldier, debates a fierce sheik with "a frown like a thousand fatal fatwas" on the question of moral tolerance, and confronts his own son for becoming an "adherent of a crazy, hard-line version of our religion." But he finds no joy in Nablus until he goes to Sami's wedding, where the sounds of music and laughter finally drown out all the sad and angry voices. "The shock of death is dead in us." That chilling line is spoken by a Hamas gunman in Matt Beynon Rees's novel. But it could just as easily have come from Levin, the protagonist of THE JERUSALEM FILE (Europa, paper, $15), Joel Stone's adamantly anti-heroic novel about a former Israeli security officer who has lost his will to live. Although the book is set up as a private-eye mystery, Levin doesn't really try to catch his client's adulterous wife in the act; spying on the lovers is enough for him to develop an obsession with the woman, who turns to him after her paramour is murdered, possibly "another victim of a random terrorist act." Stone packs this brief but moving character study with beautiful writing and much thought about the numbing experience of living with the constant expectation of sudden death from an enemy you can't quite bring yourself to hate. Even in a miserable man like Levin, "fellow-feeling for another human was hard to contain." Louise Penny applies her magic touch to A RULE AGAINST MURDER (Minotaur, $24.95), giving the village mystery an elegance and depth not often seen in this traditional genre. Although Penny is no slouch at constructing a whodunit puzzle, her great skill is her ability to create a charming mise-en-scène and inhabit it with complex characters. There's something otherworldly and altogether enchanting about the Manoir Bellechasse, the magnificent lodge in the Canadian wilderness where Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, has taken his wife for their 35th wedding anniversary. Not only does the auberge offer grand views and the order and calm of old-world service, but it also observes a no-kill policy, with the proprietors feeding wild animals in winter and forbidding guests to hunt or fish. Someone obviously failed to explain that rule to the cultured but quarrelsome family holding a reunion to unveil a statue of their late patriarch, who makes his feelings felt by toppling down on one of his own. As Gamache observes, "things were not as they seemed," not even in a paradise like Bellechasse. And never in a Louise Penny mystery. Just as reading a mystery can give a person a good reason to wake up in the morning, solving a mystery can give a bona fide depressive like Lew Fonesca a reason not to kill himself. After his wife died in a hit-and-run accident, Fonesca, Stuart M. Kaminsky's immensely likable sleuth, got in his car and kept driving until he ran out of gas in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen in Sarasota. Five books later, in BRIGHT FUTURES (Forge/Tom Doherty, $23.95), the DQ is gone, but Lew is still solving mysteries - like the solid one here involving a murdered right-wing zealot and a popular high school student whose friends want him cleared of the crime. Although Lew uses detective work to pull himself out of his depression, it's a constant battle, and he needs the friends he's acquired in this meticulously maintained series. Kaminsky sees goodness in the oddest characters, which is why Lew is still alive, and why we're still reading. Matt Beynon Rees sets his provocative mysteries in the modern-day Palestinian territories.
Kirkus Review
When an activist who opposes government financing of college scholarships and education programs for the gifted is murdered, there's no dearth of suspects. Change comes slowly to Lew Fonesca's world. The process server is still seeing therapist Ann Hurwitz, who makes him bring her biscotti, and social worker Sally Porovksy, though after four years they've never been intimate. He still never smiles, still mourns his wife Catherine's hit-and-run death back in Chicago, still allows the man who killed her to sleep on his office floor. But now he's moving to a new office and considering making his professional partnership with Ames McKinney official. And he has a new clutch of clientshigh-school student Greg Legerman, his mother Alana and his grandfather, retired TV infomercial king D. Elliot Corklewho all want to pay him to investigate the murder of anti-education crank Philip Horvecki, for which the Sarasota PD has Greg's friend Ronnie Gerall in custody. Lew's not much interested in the case, but someone else obviously is, someone who keeps shooting at Lew with a pellet gun and hitting the people around him. It's no surprise when Lew digs up dirt on the victim, the police suspect and his clients. What's much more surprising is the bombshell Sally drops on Lew, or his realization just after punching a suspect in the nose that he actually feels something. As deeply felt as Lew's first five cases (Always Say Goodbye, 2006, etc.), though the waggish cast seems to have wandered over from Kaminsky's Toby Peters franchise. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In this sixth and final entry in Edgar Award winner Kaminsky's Lew Fonesca series-following Always Say Goodbye, also available from Sound Library-the soft-boiled Sarasota, FL, detective must clear the name of a surly teenager accused of bludgeoning a wealthy eccentric. Series reader Michael -McConnohie captures Fonesca's sober masculinity, as well as the women, teens, and men who cross his path. McConnohie needs only to master the pronunciation of "Tamiami" to keep from shattering the mood for listeners familiar with the Sunshine State. Highly recommended for public library mystery collections. [Audio clip available through www.bbcaudiobooksamerica.com.-Ed.]-Judith Robinson, Dept. of Lib. & Information Studies, Univ. at Buffalo (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
