With its shut-down mines, with its scarred and restive blue-collar descendants of Eastern European and Italian immigrants, Rocksburg, Pennsylvania, is in the midst of tough times. And no one has it tougher than its own police chief, Mario Balzic. Working harder and longer hours than he ever did in his long-ago rookie days, Balzic again pilots a black-and-white through the town's brooding streets. The recent death of his mother, whose warm presence is especially missed by his wife Ruth, doesn't make it easier. Balzic answers a call: a strange woman, Valery, mother of a young daughter named Coo, warns that her violent husband may exact a brutal form of revenge on a truck-driver with a shady past. She wants Balzic to head off the attack, but supplies few details. Balzic senses worse trouble ahead than suggested by Valery - and events prove Balzic's instincts apocalyptically correct. Meanwhile, at the local tavern, Balzic encounters Myushkin, a wild, deceptively eccentric Russian-American writer, with nine novels to his credit, no visible means of support, and an alarming facility with a .22 revolver. It's Myushkin who becomes Balzic's spiritual guide through the case - and a peculiarly American, distinctly personal brand of hell.
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From Publishers Weekly
Abandoning most conventions of the police procedural (but not pitch-perfect dialogue) in his tenth Mario Balzic tale, Constantine shrewdly observes social mores in economically depressed Rocksburg, Pa., and takes aim at the literary establishment in the process. On a visit to Muscotti's Bar, police chief Balzic gets an earful of woes from foul-mouthed author Nick Myushkin, who has penned nine critically acclaimed books but is currently broke and must leave home so his wife can collect welfare. Nick believes authors are exploited by readers who get their books from libraries and suggests that this can be remedied by tax credits to authors--not by subsidies to writing "artistes," of whom he is grandly contemptuous. Why does Nick tell this to a cop? Because he's troubled and needs to talk, a condition Mario realizes has become pervasive in Rocksburg. Lonely people call in complaints to get attention from the police, while at home his wife Ruth, who attends a women's seminar at a local college, wants to talk because she can no longer confide in Mario's mother (who died in Sunshine Enemies, the most recent Balzic title). Beleaguered Mario, your average guy, listens, tries to help, sometimes loses his temper and finally recovers a troubling memory from Iwo Jima. Constantine takes a hard look at the world and discovers it doesn't make sense--which makes a pretty good mystery after all.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Tough economic times ravages Rockford, Pennsylvania, where police chief Mario Balzic must deal with an eccentric Russian American writer and a violent man bent on revenge.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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