Dead Air [Paperback]

Ed Goldberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1998

Anew mystery from Shamus Award-winner Ed Goldberg... New York gumshoe Lenny Schneider moves out to Portland, Oregon, and in with his buddy Walter, a controversial radio show host at KOOK-FM. Counterculture is alive and raging at KOOK, and soon the New York dick finds himself embroiled in murder. Two of Walter's colleagues have been killed with a bayonet from Walter's knife collection, and Lenny just may be the next request on the murderer's "hit" list...

* Author of Served Cold, Winner of the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award
* As usual, this Lenny Schneider novel is full of it--New York attitude, humor, and mind-boggling mystery

Editorial Reviews

Review

"While reminiscent of the hard-boiled favorites Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Ed Goldberg has his own unique writing style. He understands that the greatest plot in the world can-t hold up if the readers are unable to wrap themselves around an interesting and entertaining cast of characters. With this, Goldberg performs in Sam Spades. 4 Stars!"-- Douglas Quinn, Author of Blue Heron Marsh

"Ed Goldberg can lob a phrase with the deftness of any Raymond Chandler on the block...a great sense of humor...taut and compelling."--The Arizona Jewish Post

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425162974
• ISBN-13: 978-0425162972
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,006,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A funny hardboiled mystery, March 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Dead Air (Paperback)

What happens to a youthful radical when he becomes an adult and needs employment? If you are native new Yorker Lenny Schneider, you become a private detective who works on cases that interest you and provide you enough cash to pay for the bare necessities. Lenny's latest case is accepted because his client is former Brooklyn Dodger Elmo "Deak" Newcombe. He wants Lenny to find his daughter's burial site and bring the body home where she belongs.

Lenny reluctantly flies to Portland where he meets his old sixties buddy, Walter Egon, who is the host of a controversial counterculture radio show on KOOK-FM. Lenny soon learns that his current case is based on false information and Walter is the prime suspect in the bayonet killing of a rival kook. When a second radio employee is killed, Lenny works gratis to prove his friend is innocent in spite of the growing evidence to the contrary.

Ed Goldberg has a unique style and voice that allows him to imbue a realistic authenticity in his intriguing characters, especially his fellow New Yorkers (feels autobiographical). Anyone who can come up with a name like Elmo Deak Newcombe knows how to pay homage to dem bums. Though the well designed mystery is serious and dangerous, Mr. Goldberg's delightful sense of humor turns the novel into a frolicking reading experience that brilliantly combines the tragic with the jocular. DEAD AIR is false advertising as the book is anything but its title since it is a real treasure to be read several times over so as to not miss some of the more subtle sense of the absurds peppered throughout the whole. Hopefully, Lenny will appear in more novels perhaps with an infant holding a rattle that when shook says: "The Giants win the pennant".

Harriet Klausner

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mystery with a side of Schmaltz, June 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dead Air (Paperback)

As a New Yorker who likes her mystery novels, I definitely enjoyed Dead Air. Of course, knowing a bissel of Yiddish helped. But I don't know the Northwest and appreciated Mr. Goldberg's descriptions which practically take you there. His characters are people we all know and love (that is, if you know anyone from the Left or Right). The author brings his own judgements to the table (of course), but they don't overwhelm you.

The kind of book that almost made me miss my subway stop!

3.0 out of 5 stars Not much of a mystery, but good local flavor, July 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Dead Air (Paperback)

The caper is strictly by the numbers -- I figured out whodunit long before Goldberg's protagonist. But this book will still be enjoyable for anyone familiar with the Portland countercultural scene of the early to mid '90s, especially the milieu surrounding community station KBOO and related local grass-roots media. Any resemblance to real persons living or dead is probably pretty accurate, but you can't prove anything!!