Customer Reviews

Dead Air

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

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!

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!!

I don't know where the two previous reviews came up with 5 stars for this one. Ugghhhhhh! The only thing that kept me reading this was that I ordered it through Amazon and paid the extra service charge to get the book. Having paid the additional money I was determined that I would read this book no matter what it took. This book first of all was extremely disappointing in that the previous reviews prompted me to buy it. Here's a slew of reasons why it was one of the worst mysteries I have read.

1. The story moved slow (like at a snail's pace). It takes almost halfway into the book to get to the mystery noted on the back. There isn't any quality build up to that point. The book moves a long in a series of tangents that are meaningless and you don't need any more insight into the main character Lenny Schneider.

2. The mystery and solution are so unbelievably weak. It's as simple as that.

3. The whole book is extremely boring. I was hoping for a mystery with some insight into a Jewish detective as stated in the other reviews. I didn't find it.

To belabor this more would only be cruel, but suffice it to say if you are looking for a good mystery skip this one. Save your money. I wish I had.