Clea's Moon [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Edward Wright (Author), Garrick Hagon (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2004

Once he was Sierra Lane, hero to countless youngsters in a series of B-movie westerns. Now, after two years in prison, John Ray Horn lives on the margins of post-World War II Los Angeles. His wife has left him and, blacklisted by the studios, he makes ends meet by collecting debts for his old co-star. Then an old friend contacts Horn to tell him about some obscene photos found in his dead father's possession. They include one--several years old--of Clea, Horn's stepdaughter before his divorce. Within days, Scotty is dead and Clea has run away...

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Post-World War II Los Angeles is seedy-ripe for detectives, and Wright, in his debut novel, works the soil skillfully. His hero has the right credentials for a noir sleuth: after being blacklisted, sent to jail on an assault rap, and abandoned by his wife, Ray Horn is a long, long way from his early success as a hero in B-movie westerns. Now he works as a debt collector for his former faithful Indian sidekick turned casino owner. It's a short jump to sleuthing, and when an old friend approaches him with a problem, Horn is ready to go. The friend's father, a real estate mogul, has died, leaving behind boxes of disturbing photos of young girls, one of whom is Horn's stepdaughter. The friend gets pushed out a window, Horn's stepdaughter goes missing, and Horn is forced into finding the link between the pictures, the girl, and the friend. A well-paced mystery, satisfyingly strewn with period details--just the kind of first novel that makes you hope for more. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

A well-paced mystery, satisfyingly strewn with period details - just the kind of first novel that makes you hope for more. -- Booklist, May 1, 2003 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Chivers Audio Books (April 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 075408485X
• ISBN-13: 978-0754084853
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Edward Wright grew up in Arkansas and went to school in Tennessee and Illinois. He has been an officer in the U.S. Navy and an editor at the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. His noir-flavored mysteries featuring John Ray Horn -- "Clea's Moon," "While I Disappear" (U.K. title: "The Silver Face"), and "Red Sky Lament" -- set in Los Angeles during the 1940s, have won the Shamus Award in the U.S. and the Debut Dagger and Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award in the U.K. His first non-series book, "Damnation Falls," a contemporary mystery-thriller set in small-town Tennessee, won the Barry Award. His latest novel, "From Blood," was named one of the best mysteries of the year by the Financial Times of London, and a U.S. edition is due in 2012. Although now a Californian, he retains a Southerner's love of barbecue and bluegrass music. He and his wife, Cathy, live in the Los Angeles area. www.edwardwrightbooks.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Debut, July 8, 2004

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Clea's Moon (Hardcover)

This is one of those novels that leaves you wondering why the guy hasn't been writing books since he was sixteen or something. It's a detective story, yes, a private eye novel with all of the atmosphere and intellegence that the genre requires to be well done. It's also a wonderful period piece and a decent picture of Hollywood's past.

John Ray Horn is a former rodeo bronc-rider turned B-Western star who tanked his career when he decked the son of the head of his studio, putting the guy in the hospital with a broken jaw. He did two years in prison for that, and when he returned, he discovered that his old boss had blacklisted him and his acting career was over. His faithful Indian sidekick, though, had invested his earnings from the movies and bought a poker parlor/casino on the edge of L.A., and he offers Horn a job collecting bad debts from gamblers. Horn reluctantly takes it, though he hates the work.

When a friend approaches him with some intriguing information about Horn's former step-daughter (the wife divorced him while he was in jail), he decides to look into things. Then the friend is apparently a suicide, and of course Horn doesn't believe it and looks into that too.

The action is interesting, with not too much violence, but enough to keep things exciting, and the characters are wonderfully drawn and intelligently portrayed. Los Angeles has never been more authentically depicted (to my mind the author easily outdoes Ellroy) with the settings, from restaurants to studio lots to the developing San Fernando Valley all wonderfully toured.

I loved this book, and I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in old movies, detective stories, or Los Angeles.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb debut novel, March 1, 2004

By 

Larry Gandle (Tampa, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Clea's Moon (Hardcover)

CLEA'S MOON comes to us with high expectations. In Great Britain it has won the CWA Debut Dagger for fiction which is not the award for best first novel (The Creasey Award) but judgment based on a 500 word synopsis of the book and the opening pages up to 3000 words . (I anticipate a nomination for the Creasey Award this year.) Though first published in Great Britain, the author is American and the characters and setting most assuredly are as well. It is a gem and another one of the year's best debuts.
John Ray Horn is a former star of B-movie westerns. Along with his "Tonto" or sidekick Indian friend Joseph Mad Dog, they provided many hours of enjoyment for young moviegoers. Now, however, Horn is out of the movie business after a prison term that resulted in a divorce. He works for his old friend, Mad Dog, collecting debts for the Indian's casino business. One day, Horn is contacted by an old friend, Scotty, who wants to show him some his father's pictures which he discovered after his father's death. The photos reveal very young girls in provocative positions. One of the photos is of Clea, Horn's former stepdaughter. When Horn contacts his ex-wife inquiring about Clea, he is told she has disappeared. Horn then pursues her. The search takes him to the dark and forbidden underworld of Los Angeles in the late 1940s.
CLEA'S MOON is an exceptional novel and what is even more remarkable is that it is a first novel. It runs on all cylinders right out of the starting gate. Characters, plot, pacing all combine to perfection in this wonderfully atmospheric novel. Horn, being a faded cowboy movie star, is an interesting main protagonist. What is especially intriguing throughout most of the book is the question as to why he was in prison. We learn the answer late in the book. Nothing is left to chance. The search for Clea propels the story along. However, once she is found, the question arises as to why she ran away. Pages fly by as we find out the stunning truth. Edward Wright is a journalist and, like so many journalists before him, has written a superb debut novel.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why Isn't This Guy a Star?, August 1, 2007

By 

Timothy Hallinan (Bangkok/Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Clea's Moon (John Horn) (Paperback)

I completely fail to understand why Edward Wright isn't one of the best-known and best-selling mystery writers in the world today. "Clea's Moon" introduces his protagonist, John Ray Horn, once the star of a series of low-budget westerns and now blacklisted from the film industry and very much down on his luck. The book's brilliantly structured plot draws Horn into a mystery involving a young girl who was once his step-daughter, a ring of deeply perverted men, one of LA's most powerful gangsters, and a psychotic stunt man who bounces back from the worst punch as though somewhere in his mind he thinks the cameras are rolling. Wright captures Los Angeles in the late 1940s/early 50s, when the San Fernando Valley was still full of orange groves, although the bulldozers were advancing, and the cops were frankly and sometimes openly corrupt. And he catches the fascinating world of film-making, even at the low-budget studios that ground out the cheapie westerns. Wright's plotting is superb, his characters are unforgettable, and he raises issues of individual courage and responsibility with a skill that most "serious novelists" would envy. Buy this book and, if you love it, get the others. Edward Wright deserves it.