An American Killing [Hardcover]

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 1998

A smart-mouthed, fast-paced tale of marriage, murder, and double-dealing in the best-selling tradition of Susan Isaacs, Olivia Goldsmith, and Diane Johnson. As such things are measured in Washington, Denise Burke has everything a woman of wit could want: two hip kids able to look after themselves; a marriage carefully constructed to allow maximum mutual leeway with a husband smack in the center of Clinton's inner circle; and a high-profile lover, the most eligible bachelor on Capitol Hill. Plus, she's a best-selling author of true-crime books. Not bad for a kid from the wrong side of the tracks whose mother never saw the wrong side of a bottle of booze. When her lover urges Denise to look into an old murder in his home district--and then just as urgently begs her to drop the whole thing--her stubborn streak kicks in. And when he dies in flagrante with a D.C. call girl, her bullshit detector goes on red alert: the good congressman didn't have to pay for sex. But it's when death strikes even closer to home that Denise becomes a woman with a big-time problem. Someone is serious about getting her to drop the old case. Serious enough to make her Numero Uno for the next hit. Combining the political savvy of Anonymous, the barbed wit of Sue Grafton, and the Lone Ranger instincts of Travis McGee, An American Killing is this year's big best-seller.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As a novice writer, Ann Rule worked beside serial killer Ted Bundy for months before his identity as a mass murderer was unmasked. Rule broke into the literary big time with The Stranger Beside Me, exposing the hidden side of the man she thought she knew. But Rule did more than whet a national appetite for true crime stories with her ground-breaking book. She also gave Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, the author of four critically acclaimed novels, a model for Denise Burke, the heroine of this unusually well-written story of sex, crime, and politics.

Burke is equally at ease in Washington, D.C., where her husband is Bill Clinton's adviser on domestic affairs and she and Hillary trade wardrobe tips on what to wear to Parent's Day at Sitwell Friends School (hint: You can't go wrong with a suit), and in New Caxton, Rhode Island, where Eddie Baines was tried and found guilty for a gruesome triple slaying he may not have committed. It's not the kind of crime Burke usually writes about--for one thing, it doesn't have a hero, and every good true crime book needs one. But Owen Hall, Burke's lover and New Claxton's congressman, has a personal interest in seeing the truth come out about the murders, so she starts investigating. The truth turns out to be much more horrifying than either Burke or the congressman expected, and it keeps readers turning the pages to see the effect it has on the town, its founding family and other inhabitants, and Burke's own life. What sets An American Killing apart from other books in the genre is Smith's talent for characterization--not only the major figures in the novel, but the minor ones, too, especially Poppy, the head of the FBI crime lab and Burke's best friend; Nick Burke, Burke's husband; Rosie Owzciak, the town librarian; and New Caxton itself, a dying town whose fortunes are tied to those of Owen Hall and his brother Charles. This is a smart, sexy, completely engrossing novel that should win its author the wide commercial acceptance that her previous novels, too, deserve. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Fans of Smith's four literary novels, which include The Book of Phoebe and Masters of Illusion, may be surprised by her segue into the suspense genre, but the good news is that she succeeds admirably in this lively and absorbing novel. Her heroine, Denise Burke, a bestselling writer of true crime books, is mentally seduced by charismatic Congressman Owen Hall at a Literary Guild bash (one of many references to publishing manners and mores) into writing about a triple murder in Owen's home town of New Caxton, R.I., for which Eddie Baines, a black former local sports star, was convicted in a travesty trial. As Denise begins to investigate the murder of the Montevallo family, physical seduction and a rapturous love affair with Owen quickly follow. Denise, who is enduring a lackluster marriage to Nick Burke, a top man in the Clinton administration, soon is rocketing back and forth between D.C. and New Caxton, where she uncovers a pattern of chicanery and deception that involves the entire community. When Owen does a sudden about-face and pleads with her to abandon the book, Denise refuses and finds herself in peril. Among the novel's attractions are Smith's nimble use of Washington gossip and her grasp of forensic details. Notable also is her astute portrayal of an economically depressed town where racism and ethnic bias among Poles, Italians and blacks did not surface until jobs became scarce (members of New Caxton's patrician population, to which Hall's family belongs, are referred to by the others as "Americans"). Fueled by "pathologically cynical" narrator Denise's sarcastic quips, the plot zips along at a brisk pace and stumbles only toward the end, when Smith unveils a credibility-stretching surfeit of villains and motives in untangling the web of crimes and suspects. Meanwhile, Smith's witty, intelligent take on the links between high-level politics and sophisticated crime has the ring of truth and the zest of a real page-turner. Agent, Aaron Priest Agency; 75,000 first printing; major ad/promo; BOMC selection; audio to Brilliance; author tour; foreign rights sold in Germany, U.K. and the Netherlands.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (September 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805057021
• ISBN-13: 978-0805057027
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,427,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I have lived all my life in Connecticut except for the two years I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. Presently, I write from my crow's nest in East Haven, breaking periodically to ride the rails from New Haven to New York where I do enjoy the city lights. I have two children, Jene, an RN at Yale-New Haven's clinics, and Jere, who has had a blog since 2004: A Red Sox Fan From Pinstripe Territory (http://letsgosox.blogspot.com) Not only does he cover Red Sox lore and stats, he reviews my books--when he's not co-writing them with me i.e. DIRTY WATER: A RED SOX MYSTERY.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GOSSIPY AND GRIPPING, GLAMOUROUS AND GRITTY, January 1, 2001

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An American Killing (Mass Market Paperback)

Gossipy and gripping, glamourous and gritty aren't contradictions in An American Killing but add zest to the mix in this intriguing multi-tiered thriller by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith.

After four critically praised literary endeavors, including Masters Of Illusion (1994) and The Port Of Missing Men (1989), Ms. Smith has gracefully repaired to the thriller field. Her first effort in this genre is delivered with all the aplomb and style of an established master. Sure to garner new fans and plaudits for the author, An American Killing also gifts readers with one top-notch, skillfully conceived mystery.

By choosing today's power-driven Washington, D.C. as her setting, the author establishes an immediacy that makes this chilling tale even more disturbing. Conversations with contemporary literati and weekends shared with Bill and Hillary satisfy a yen for insider scoops, while intelligent, probative comments regarding racism, politics, and marriage enrich the novel's narrative. Ms. Smith shows a special knack for revealing the intimate longings and protective responses of a bruised human heart.

Smart and sardonic, Denise Burke is a true crime writer who has regularly snared bestseller list slots with her O. J. Simpson tell-all and revelations about murderous moms (think Susan Smith). Married to remote, rather oblivious Nick, a Clinton policy adviser, and mother of two almost unrealistically reliable and independent adolescents, she is privy to Washington's in-circle as well as Literary Guild soirees.

Upon meeting attractive, charismatic Congressman Owen Hall, Denise is, in this order: impressed, involved, in bed with him. Suggesting that a black man, Eddie Baines, may have been wrongly convicted of wantonly stabbing the Montevallo family to death, Owen asks her to look into the murders. The crime site was his hometown of New Caxton, Rhode Island, a dried up industrial juncture that he describes as an idyllic New England community where a premeditated murder has never taken place and the street signs are red in honor of the football team.

Unable to resist either her blue blooded lover or his request, it is not too long before Denise discovers a hint of "the violence that lays just beneath the surface of the guileless picture of New Caxton that Owen Hall had drawn."

Commuting between Alexandria, Virginia, and her beach house, a safe half-hour from New Caxton, Denise's skills as a researcher begin to uncover the subterfuge, the cunning deception practiced by the entire community.

When Owen does an abrupt turn-around and asks her to forget about the case, Denise isn't surprised. By that time she has discovered that his concern for a fellow man was prompted not by charity but by his own cowardice and abysmal past. A past that has somehow caused the death of a likable young reporter who was also looking into the case, and placed Denise's life in jeopardy.

With Denise Burke Ms. Smith has created a witty, plucky and thoroughly likeable heroine whom we'd like to meet again. And, when she returns, it is hoped she'll bring Buddy, one of the most lovable canines to hit fiction since Asta, as well as her best friend FBI Agent Poppy Rice, she of the wide blue eyes, cynical repartee, and legs that stretch from here to Tuesday.

Fresh as the latest Web report with show-no-mercy pace and crackling dialogue, An American Killing is what every thriller should be - absorbing, intelligent, suspenseful and a terrific makes you sorry-when-it's-over tale.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An up-all-night thriller with a killer edge of wit, September 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: An American Killing (Hardcover)

Take notes on the conversations in this book - they're so zingy that you'll want to use Mary-Ann Tirone Smith's lines the next time you're at a cocktail party and the verbal dissections start. The people are smart in An American Killing, but it's the plot that keeps you riveted to your seat. It's breathless. I read it in one night. I can't wait until her next one comes out.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars give me more!, January 18, 2002

By 

don kennedy (california,USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An American Killing (Mass Market Paperback)

It's been a while since I read this book, but I have no trouble remembering how hard it was to put down. It was a unique read, well conceived characters, swift moving plot, a refreshing brevity of language, ( dare I say for a female author?), and lots of surprises. What more can you ask for, you say? Well, I only ask for more, more, more! Unfortunately, this is the only book that this author has written of this genre. I'll keep looking and hoping though. More, please!