Customer Reviews

Blue Lonesome (Beeler Large Print Series)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When an accomplished, experienced author tackles loneliness, frustration, chicanery and murder, you get something like Blue Lonesome. Jim Messenger is a lonely, bored San Francisco CPA, drifting through life. He observes a woman called Janet Mitchell at a cafe where he eats dinner every night. Messenger wonders about her and when she stops coming, he is idly moved to learn why. What Messenger discovers is that she has committed suicide.

Gradually, he becomes more and more obsessed with learning her story. His physical journey takes him several hundred miles east to the dried-up desert town of Beulah, Nevada. His emotional journey takes him much farther, and is not finished when the book ends.

Beulah is a town of simmering desires, dusty secrets and vicious attitudes. It is also a town peopled with good citizens. Part of Pronzini's strength is his ability to create a place and characters that are in everyone's sight. Beulah could be any town. It could be yours.

Okay. Here's the set-up:
You are a lonely middle-aged CPA and you eat at the same places almost every day. You notice a sad looking woman, not a pretty one, mind you, just sad, and you identify with her because she is so obviously lonesome, just like our CPA.
You get the nerve up to try and speak with her, and it doesn't work. She doesn't tell you her name or anything about her. You follow her home one night and find out her name is Janet Mitchell. You are obsessed with why she's so lonely. Soon she stops coming to the restaurant and you're worried. You go visit her apartment complex and speak to the oriental landlady. She tells you that the lady is dead, committing suicide in her bathtub. Now, would you even imagine pursuing this any further? Well, James Messenger, our hero does.
Although I found the setup for this novel quite unbelievable, Pronzini manages to make it work with his wonderful prose and sense of characterizations. Needless to say, Messenger ends up in the lady's hometown of Beulah, Nevada, and finds out her real name, and learns that she had been accused of murdering her philandering husband AND her eight year old daughter. Messenger knows she didn't do it (how, you got me!). Soon, Messenger faces the expected town bullies and even the dead woman's sister. He takes a job on her ranch, and gets more and more involved with the lady and the townspeople.
The book is short, moves along well, and the ending is quite a surprise, at least to me.
It's not what I consider a great book, but if you can get past the ludicrous setup, you should enjoy it.
RECOMMENDED.

A great mystery in which you'll never guess what's going on until the end. I'd actually give it 4 and 1/2 stars. Nice to see a protagonist who's just an ordinary schmuck rather than a FBI agent, corporate super-lawyer, or CIA hit-man. Easy to empathize and root for the main character. I finished it in two sittings.

It's been a while since I read this book so you won't get a synopsis from me, but after reading this book, I remember thinking it was one of the BEST MYSTERIES I've ever read. Although Mr. Pronzini has written other really good mysteries, this one really stands out.

Blue Lonesome was my first Pronzini novel and I was completely hooked by his moody, noirish, detective procedurals. After reading Blue Lonesome I spent the next 18 months acquiring and devouring all of the thirty-plus Nameless mysteries, and many of Pronzini's stand-alone mysteries. Most of his books are great reads, some are classics of the genre, but they all have his spare, straight, brilliant way of putting you in a scene. The carefully developed plots lead to some out-of-the-way corner and maybe a single clue. Pronzini's loner-protagonists are usually on a quest for truth, despite the consequences, and they don't give up. They keep digging until the mystery is solved, sometimes in an explosive climax.

In many of the Nameless mysteries, I felt like I became Nameless himself, grinding away until I had it all figured out. Can there be any greater compliment to a writer? As some reviewer said of Pronzini's novels, "this is writing to be savored over a glass of single-malt scotch." Exactly.

Note: I made some immature Mormon angry because of my negative reviews of books out to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews almost as fast as they are posted. This is the second time I've re-posted my review of this book.

Your "helpful" vote is greatly appreciated, and please remember that a short review is not necessarily a bad review if it leads you to a great novel.

This book hooked me from the start. I don't want to give much of it away, but a man meets a lonely woman in San Francisco, and then she dies. The man knows nothing about the woman, and he goes to her apartment and finds a book that was checked out of a Nevada library. He takes some time off work and tries to solve the mystery of her life and death. It's also a great love story of a man finding a new home.

A great mystery, and not to be missed.

Check out the mysterious cover illustration. Very nice!

Also, if you are interested in American history, check my one-star reviews of books written by Mormons.

This is a novel with the depth of Horton Footes classic "Tender Mercies," and although noir in tone it is not quite like anything else Pronzini has written. A wonderfully understated novel written by an author at the height of his powers.

I read this book on the recommendation of some "net buddies" and I'm so glad I did.

Jim Messenger, a lonely CPA going nowhere either personally or professionally, notices a woman who frequents his favorite San Francisco diner. He notices that she is always alone, always eats the same thing, and always avoids contact with other humans. Messenger tags her "Ms. Blue Lonesome."

His one-time attempt to make conversation with her fails miserably, but she intrigues him. When she quits coming to the diner, Messenger finds out that she has committed suicide and his life comes totally unhinged.

As he begins to unravel the mystery of Ms. Blue Lonesome's true identity, he becomes more and more obscessed with her life and her sad, blue lonesome story.

The only reason I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 is that I'm really weary of childhood sexual abuse being at the core of every book I read. I hope that doesn't give away too much, but I'm sick of being confronted with that kind of evil everywhere I turn.

I liked the book, loved the writer's style and would read him again.

I enjoyed the size (non-huge) & pace of this book, as well as the setting (the Nevada desert & ranch land, largely). But in a brief book, I suppose it's tough to have characters that don't seem one-dimensional. In this book, many of them do; after you've met them the first time, little else about them will come as a surprise. Still, the dialogue and descriptions are generally well done, and the progression of the main character from Grey Flannel Suit to His Own Man is interesting to watch. How WOULD somebody go about throwing their old life away for a new one, and what would bring that about? Fun questions, and this book explores them in an intriguing way.

For those who can relate to middle-aged-male angst and like to read mysteries, Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks books will probably be at least as enjoyable as Blue Lonesome.

Bill Pronzini is one of the best mystery writers around, known for his "nameless" detective series. Checking out some of his other non-nameless books, I picked up the Blue Lonesome at the library. It is a typical Pronzini novel, moving quickly from scene to scene with the usual question-and-answer dialogue and just enough scene-setting and description of the arid Nevada landscape to hold the story in place. In this one, lonesome CPA Jim Messenger is driven to unravel the mysterious suicide of a woman he knows only through seeing her at Messenger's usual evening dining spot. The woman, Janet Mitchell, is also lonely and bitter, or so Messenger believes, and when she does not show up for several days, he decides to investigate. {He once followed her to her apartment and thus knows her address]. A clue in her unclaimed belongings leads him to the small town of Beulah, Nevada, there to discover her real identity and the reason why she left months earlier for San Francisco. The plot thickens as Messenger is rebuffed in his efforts to find out more, particularly in that her leaving was because she was the main suspect in the killing of her husband--a womanizing type--and her eight year-old daughter. Threats against his life because he believes Anna, her real name, is innocent and a growing relationship with Anna's tough-talking sister, Dacy, and another murder brings the mystery to a satisfying and somewhat romantic close

The only problems with the novel is that the quiet leave-me-alone Messenger morphs quickly into Sam Spade, asking questions and acting anything like his initial self. Also, it is a bit of a stretch that everyone in the town is convinced that Anna must be the murderer. If one can put these inconsistencies aside, this is one of those novels, perhaps 60,000 words, often read from start to finish with few breaks.