Goofy Foot: An Alex Rasmussen Mystery (Alex Rasmussen Mysteries) [Hardcover]

David Daniel (Author)

Book Description

Series: Alex Rasmussen Mysteries | Publication Date: February 1, 2004

In Goofy Foot, private investigator Alex Rasmussen, embarking on a rather routine search for a missing teenager, finds himself in cold water that couldn't be hotter, as the simple task balloons into murderous surfers and a heart-stopping search for a killer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's been a long time since Alex Rasmussen's last appearance, in Daniel's The Skelly Man (1995), but his superb third outing shows the Lowell, Mass., PI at the top of his form as he takes on a missing persons case that spirals from a deceptively simple beginning into a convoluted and increasingly dangerous search. A teenage girl, Michelle Nickerson, whose parents divorced when she was five, is supposed to be with her father, Ben Nickerson, in the town of Standish, where Ben grew up. But her mother hasn't heard from her and can't locate either of them. Rasmussen's initial probes unearth only vague sightings and possibilities. Gradually, more sinister scenarios connected to Ben's past and Standish's future emerge. With a fine feel for small-town life, the author skillfully draws on the radical changes that have occurred in places like Standish in recent decades and depicts a complex cast of suspects, allies, outcasts and good guys. Rasmussen's faults, foibles and grit, however, carry the load. Readers will want to scurry to find Daniel's earlier books in the series, though if they come across his and Chris Carpenter's Murder at the Baseball Hall of Fame (1996), they may be disappointed to find it isn't in the same league.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Lowell, Massachusetts, sleuth Alex Rasmussen handles dozens of cases involving missing teenagers. So when Paula Jensen wants Alex to find her daughter, long overdue from a summer visit with her father, it sounds like business as usual. Not quite. Both father and daughter are missing, and when Alex follows their trail to a small seaside town, he is greeted by a cliquish citizenry more concerned with keeping secrets than finding a missing child. The most daunting human roadblock is developer Ted Rand, to whom most everyone in the town is beholden. But Rand and his quadriplegic son are at the heart of what the townsfolk seem determined to hide. Daniel was the winner of the Best First Private Eye Novel in 1993 for The Heaven Stone. He continues to build on that promise with the Rasmussen series. The characters are painfully human, the dialogue sharp without being over the top, and the small-town ambience dead-on. Fans of Pronzini's Nameless or Randisi's Joe Keough will find Rasmussen a welcome addition to their lists of usual suspects. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (February 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312323492
• ISBN-13: 978-0312323493
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,275,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alex is at it again, March 23, 2004

By 

Kenneth A Heite (Middletown, DE United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Goofy Foot: An Alex Rasmussen Mystery (Alex Rasmussen Mysteries) (Hardcover)

In the third book in the Alex Rasmussen mystery series David Daniel gives us a book which is hard to put down and even harder to figure out who is who and what is what.

In a background of aging surfers, small town police, missing persons and get rich land barons, we find our hero trying to figure out who is missing and who is dead. As he travels from Lowell to a small Massachusetts vacation resort town to try and find a missing father and daughter, Alex runs into more intrigue and trouble than he baragins for.

If you are a fan of the Alex Rasmussen series, you will love this book and if you are just now reading your first A.R. mystery, I am sure that you will want to catch up with the others.

Surf's up, dudes, but the waves are high and treacherous in this non-stop thriller. Grab your board and go for the ride of your life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Publish or Perish, February 8, 2004

By 

GL (Lowell, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Goofy Foot: An Alex Rasmussen Mystery (Alex Rasmussen Mysteries) (Hardcover)

After last year's excellent and underrated classic, "White Rabbit" David Daniel's returns with "Goofy Foot" the third installment of his Alex Rasmussen mystery series.

Though the plot of a missing girl is less than innovative, Daniel structures it nicely and his character development is par excellence. "Goofy Foot" bounces from great storytelling to literature in a way that keeps the pages turning. His protagonist, hard-boiled Alex Rasmussen is a modern day Philip Marlowe. In the Lowell settings, you can feel at once the working-class pride and the grinding existence, and the reader looks forward to his next Rasmussen blues' book and his "Ghost of Kerouac."

Daniel has stories to tell.

5.0 out of 5 stars An all-around super book!, March 9, 2005

By 

Verna Suit (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Goofy Foot: An Alex Rasmussen Mystery (Alex Rasmussen Mysteries) (Hardcover)

David Daniel's descriptions of place and atmosphere in GOOFY FOOT are right on the mark. In the seaside town of Standish you can feel the salt air and hear bar music drifting through the fog. "Goofy foot" is slang for a surfer who leads with the off-foot. But it also means "how you sometimes get the intuitive stuff...inklings." The reader, like Alex himself, gets inklings of what's going on and comes to understand things intuitively, the way it usually happens in real life. With another writer this lack of specificity might be annoying, but Daniel has brought the reader so completely into the story, and Alex has been so honest with his thoughts, that in GOOFY FOOT all seems as it should be.

This was an all-around super book! I loved it, just the way I loved Daniel's last book, WHITE RABBIT. So it looks like David Daniel is just a terrific writer and anything he produces has a good chance of being a great read.