Cry of Shadows Pb (A Jack Dwyer Mystery) [Paperback]

Ed Gorman (Author)

Book Description

Series: A Jack Dwyer Mystery | Publication Date: February 28, 1999

Christmas, and inside the fashionable Avanti club the rich and young celebrate with champagne. Outside, in the bitter cold, derelicts beg for scraps and sleep where they can. Two worlds apart, but something connects them. Something deadly. Something Jack Dwyer must find.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gorman's short, undemanding mystery features detective Jack Dwyer (previously seen in The Autumn Dead ), who is hired by one of the owners of Avanti, a chic restaurant/nightclub in an unnamed American city, to deal with "some problems" ostensibly caused by residents of a nearby homeless shelter. Imperious Richard Coburn charges Dwyer to figure out how anyone could have sneaked into his heavily protected restaurant. Before Dwyer can tackle the task, he is fired by another of the restaurant's backers, the vulpine Tom Anton. Several days later, Coburn is murdered, and his gorgeous, none-too-grieving widow re-hires Dwyer to locate the killer. Lots of people have a motive: Coburn was a womanizer and a snob. The restaurant staff hated him for being abusive and demanding; Anton hated him for sleeping with his teenaged daughter; the woman who runs the homeless shelter hated him for jilting her. Although Dwyer sporadically spouts half-baked sociological pronouncements, his methodical investigation and the novel's believable characters and situations yield a satisfying tale.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: Allison & Busby (February 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0749004118
• ISBN-13: 978-0749004118
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,077,351 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ed Gorman is an award winning American author best known for his crime and mystery fiction. He wrote The Poker Club which is now a film of the same name directed by Tim McCann.

He has written under many pseudonyms including "E. J. Gorman" and "Daniel Ransom." He won a Spur Award for Best Short Fiction for his short story "The Face" in 1992. His fiction collection Cages was nominated for the 1995 Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection. His collection The Dark Fantastic was nominated for the same award in 2001.

He has contributed to many magazines and other publications including Xero, Black Lizard, Cemetery Dance, the anthology Tales of Zorro, and many more.

Visit his blog at newimprovedgorman.blogspot.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A murder mystery with no dramatic conclusion, May 18, 2007

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Cry of Shadows (Hardcover)

Jack Dwyer is a typical character in an Ed Gorman novel. He is full of weaknesses, yet smart and tough when he has to be. He is a former cop who now works as a private investigator and he has been hired by restaurant co-owner Richard Coburn to investigate something that could close the restaurant. However, Richard won't tell Jack what it is. Then when Richard is murdered, Jack is retained by Richard's wife.
As he investigates, Jack discovers that Richard was a man who made a lot of enemies. He was impotent with his wife, yet managed to bed a large number of women and he was not terribly selective about it. There is a homeless shelter nearby run by one of Richard's conquests. It turns out that Richard was a man with a set of hard vulnerabilities that was extremely attractive to many women.
As Jack investigates, he finds himself having sexual opportunities with some of the same women. He declines the offers, as he is lovingly, albeit loosely attached to Donna. At the end, he solves the crime in a typical Gorman way, no dramatic cliff-hanger of an ending, the solution is discovered in a straightforward way and it is a very gross one.
While Gorman writes well, his mysteries are not great spell-binders that build you up and keep you glued for a few pages of dramatic climax. I enjoyed reading the book, but never really reached the point where I was in a state of intense anticipation of the next event.