Customer Reviews

77th Street Requiem: A Maggie MacGowen Mystery

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I inhale mysteries, and am always needing to find new authors to read, because my favorites simply don't write them as fast as I can read them! I found Wendy Hornsby when I was browsing in the library, and picked up one book to 'sample'. It was so good, I've read every one of her Maggie McGowen novels, and also the two books written about her other heroine Kate (forgot last name). I recommend these books highly. They are good novels as well as good mysteries, with well drawn mature characters, believable emotions, and a storyline which continues from one novel to the next. If you like Sue Grafton and Marcia Muller and Lawrence Block, start reading Wendy Hornsby!

Making her fourth appearance, Maggie MacGowan, documentary filmmaker, lands a network contract to explore the 20 year-old murder of L.A.P.D. officer Roy Frady, an unsolved case.

There are plenty of suspects. Hard-drinking, womanizing, bad-boy member of the 77th Street Station's Four Horsemen or "Whoresmen," Frady was making time with a cop buddy's girlfriend and making enemies among the street gangs he was rousting. Then there's the house where his body was found - a few blocks from the hideout where the Symbionese Liberation Front was holding Patty Hearst. And there's his ex-wife and a maniac cop-killer who was stalking his beat at the time.

Wisecracking MacGowan plunges into the crumbling neighborhood with her crew (who reveal plenty of private agendas of their own), digging up secrets and setting events in motion that lead to more murders and headlines, much to the network's delight. MacGowan favors the SLA as culprits but tawdry personal motives keep getting in the way.

Complicating the story are: MacGowan's lover, LAPD detective Mike Flint, an old partner of Frady's; MacGowan's teenage daughter, away from home for the first time, and her sister, vegetating in a coma. Even if her characters, including the old women, have a rather tiresome penchant for raunchy banter, Hornsby mixes it all up nicely, showing a deft touch with thorny issues like trust and infidelity and right-to-die decisions without ever losing a beat in her complex plot.

The characters in Wendy Hornsby's Maggie MacGowan books are well-developed and complex, and the relationships between them are fascinating, complicated, and maturely adult. I thought this was one of the better Maggie books, with an intricate and interesting plot. Wendy Hornsby has a real gift for creating characters, and she obviously has a vivid imagination as well.

RARELY DO I READ A MYSTERY THAT BRINGS BACK SUCH
MEMORIES AS THIS BOOK DOES ; I LIVED IN L.A.DURING
THE PERIOD OF TIME DESCRIBED IN MS. HORNSBY,S BOOK
AND I ALSO FOUND HER DEPICTIONS OF THE ROMANTIC SC
ENES BETWEEN HER MATURE CHARACTERS VERY REAL AND
HONEST. AS A NEW FAN THE MAGGIE MCGOWAN ARE JUST
RIGHT UP OUR CONTEMPORARY ALLEY.