Concrete Pillow [Paperback]

Ronald Tierney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1997

Despite his family's unsavory reputation, investigator Deets Shanahan takes on the case of Luke Lindstrom, who is the only surviving sibling of his generation and who wants to stop a killer from ending his life. Reprint. PW.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Indianapolis PI Deets Shanahan is a 70-something loner who finds himself in the middle of a crowd in his fourth outing (after, most recently, Eclipse of the Heart). Love interest Maureen has moved into his house, and the son he hasn't seen in 40 years is coming to visit. Meanwhile he has a new client, a heroin addict named Luke, who is one of the famous Quad Squad?a set of quadruplet brothers who electrified Indiana during their high-school basketball years. With their glory days behind them, the brothers (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) have been showing an alarming tendency to literally fall from high places. Did Mark commit suicide? Or was he pushed? Matthew survived his fall, which happened during a family outing, but is now confined to a wheelchair. Luke is convinced someone has murdered his brother and that he is next in line. The remaining family members, who exhibit an imaginative range of sociopathic tendencies, are steadfastly uncooperative and, in the case of the father, openly hostile. Shanahan is a terrific character, feisty, even noble, but he is ill-served in this choppy, improbable plot; not even the sharp exchanges he has with Maureen and others can save this entry.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Dietrich "Deets" Shanahan is a 70-year-old Indianapolis private investigator. His current client is Luke Lindstrom, one-fourth of the quadruplet brothers who won a high-school basketball championship in hoop-crazy Indiana a decade earlier. Luke has taken quite a tumble from his salad days: he's a heroin addict who is sure someone is out to get him. One of his brothers was recently paralyzed in a fall, and another committed suicide in a leap from the upper stories of a Naptown hotel. Deets takes the case, but only after Luke's father employs a couple of hard guys to discourage him. Deets is old but doesn't scare. What he finds in the Lindstrom closet is a dysfunctional family dominated by a Bible-thumping, borderline psycho of a mother. This fourth Shanahan mystery is at its heart a serious examination of family relationships. Re-evaluating his own situation--he faces a difficult reunion with a long-estranged son--in light of the Lindstroms' pain, Deets concludes that some families are worth saving and some aren't Wes Lukowsky --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Worldwide Library (February 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0373262302
• ISBN-13: 978-0373262304
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,445,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ronald Tierney's The Stone Veil introduced semi-retired, Indianapolis-based private investigator "Deets" Shanahan. The book was a finalist in St. Martin Press' "Best First Private Eye Novel" competition, and nominated for the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus Award for "Best First Novel." The recently released Bullet Beach is the tenth in the Shanahan series. Tierney lives in San Francisco, the setting for a new series, which includes the recent paperback release of Death in North Beach and a new novella in paperback and e-book -- Mascara, Death in the Tenderloin. Good to the Last Kiss scheduled for a July 2011 release is a standalone novel, also set in San Francisco. Tierney was founding editor of an Indianapolis alternative newspaper and the editor of a San Francisco monthly. For more information visit www.ronaldtierney.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a warm, witty and wise PI for a mystery both taut and cozy, March 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Concrete Pillow: A Case for Deets Shanahan (Hardcover)

Like the other books in this series, a reader gets what he/she expects--plus something more. In this case, a tense, engaging mystery, coupled with plenty of midwestern enthusiasm for basketball and a detective that is, by turns, a hopeless curmudgeon and a sauve "leading man." I really, really like this book and the rest of the Deets Shanahan stories!