The Last Nightingale: A Novel of Suspense (Mortalis) [Kindle Edition]

Anthony Flacco (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Screenwriter Flacco nicely evokes the aftermath of San Francisco's 1906 earthquake in his fiction debut, a novel of suspense. On the eve of the disaster, Sgt. Randall Blackburn, perhaps the one honest cop on the San Francisco force, patrols the grim Barbary Coast neighborhood, which has been plagued by a serial killer, whom the press has dubbed "the Surgeon," who castrates his victims. After the quake, Blackburn joins the frantic rescue efforts, in the course of which he meets 12-year-old Shane Nightingale, whose adoptive mother has been murdered by the Surgeon. In the rubble, Shane and Blackburn pursue the Surgeon, whose identity becomes known early on. Through the fiend's demented perspective we learn of a plague he plans to loose on the devastated city, but this plot line gets lost in the shuffle. The action devolves into a routine cat-and-mouse chase, building to an ending some readers will find maudlin. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Few literary depictions of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake match the intensity and visceral power of those in Flacco's gripping first novel. The author's screenwriting talent shines in this story of the earth's destructive power and humanity's moral depravity. Buildings lie in brick heaps; those buried under rubble await discovery, and emergency systems fail while citizens scramble to cope. As the broken city reels, a seething criminal element quickly grasps unprecedented opportunities for wrongdoing in the quake's aftermath. Mired in corruptive disarray, the police force is helpless against a ruthless, knife-wielding serial killer known as the Surgeon, whose latest victims are three women named Nightingale, killed in their home in the hearing of an unseen witness: Shane, the adopted son, who cowers hidden from view. Shocked and broken, Shane nevertheless steps forward to help a much-maligned Sergeant Blackburn catch the killer, offering his intuitive talent for psychological profiling. The emerging maniacal personality, revealed in increasingly gruesome and venomous detail, rivals the Ripper. Dickens meets Hannibal Lecter. Brace yourself. Jennifer Baker
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 440 KB
• Print Length: 274 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0812977572
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (December 10, 2008)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001NJUP1G
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,854 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Anthony was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, one of four brothers. Their father was an Air Force pilot and mother was a talented artist and painter.

His background as a trained stage actor with over 2,000 performances under his Actors Equity membership provides the primary basis for his critically acclaimed ability to empathize with a wide cross-section of personalities. He moved into screenwriting when he was selected for the prestigious American Film Institute fellowship in Screenwriting, and received his MFA in screenwriting there in 1990 after winning AFI's Paramount Studios Fellowship Award for his film script, The Frog's Legacy. He was then selected out of 2,000 entrants for the Walt Disney Studios Screenwriting Fellowship, and spent a year writing for the Touchstone Pictures division.

His screenwriting experience drives narrative stories that are visually compelling, whether for a movie theater or the screen of a reader's imagination.

In 1994, his first nonfiction book, A Checklist for Murder, was acquired in auction by Dell Books as a mass market paperback and turned in solid sales.

Anthony then adapted his book into a screenplay for a two-hour television movie script and sold it to NBC Studios for a movie of the week. For the next several years, he worked as a freelance script doctor and story editor.

During that time, Anthony was hired by the Discovery Channel to write a two-hour documentary entitled Deadly Spree, and his true crime writing was also featured on a one-hour episode of The Prosecutors for Court TV.

In 2003, Anthony served as a national Judge for the Illinois Arts Council, writing individual evaluations for over 100 screenplays for their 2003 Writing Awards.

In 2005, with the publication of his nonfiction book Tiny Dancer (St. Martin's Press) the book was selected by Reader's Digest as their Editor's Choice for August, 2005 -- which was their 1,000th Commemorative Issue. The book has been internationally acclaimed, and the Kansas City Star named Tiny Dancer "one of the 100 Most Noteworthy Books of 2005." In 2007, the book received Best Seller status in Italy and continues to be popular there.

Back in the U.S., his first two novels of historical fiction are from Mortalis Books at Random House. The first book, The Last Nightingale, was released in June of 2007 and was one of five nominees for "Best Original Paperback" from the International Thriller Writers Association. The second book, The Hidden Man, published in June of 2008 and created widespread interest in his historical writing within the publishing community.

In November of 2009 his historical true crime book was released by Sterling Publishing -- The Road Out Of Hell: The True Story of Sanford Clark and the Wineville Murders. It won the USA NEWS 2009 Best True Crime Book of the Year.

Publish Your Nonfiction Book (Writer's Digest Books), which Anthony co-authored with literary manager, Sharlene Martin, was also published in 2009.

He is an experienced public speaker and frequently gives seminars on crime writing, and is a featured speaker on writing for writers conferences and clubs.

For more information, see www.AnthonyFlacco.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sleep Thief, June 19, 2007

By 

Ron Saxen - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Nightingale: A Novel of Suspense (Mortalis) (Paperback)

Less than two days after picking up the book I was done--would've been quicker, but sleep and work got in the way.

Of course I live 12 miles from San Francisco and loved the setting--made me want to learn more about this traumatic time in my local history.

If you don't mind a raw and gripping read, then Flacco delivers. However, he does owe me a couple hours sleep and may end up owing you the same.

Ron

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Boy Wonder, November 6, 2007

By 

Ted Feit (Long Beach, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Last Nightingale: A Novel of Suspense (Mortalis) (Paperback)

Just over 100 years ago--1906--the Great Earthquake nearly destroyed San Francisco. Amidst the destruction and carnage, the Nightingale family was murdered, although the police observation at the scene attributed the deaths to the earthquake. Hidden in the house undetected was Shane, an adopted son, who heard the perpetrator talking to his victims as he slew them. When the carnage was over, Shane--the last Nightingale of the title--left the house and took refuge at the Mission Dolores, where he was given a job caretaking the cemetery, and a shed in which to live.

A larger-than-life police sergeant, Randall Blackburn, makes Shane's acquaintance when the boy writes him a note suggesting a motive for the murder of a prominent citizen for which Blackburne was assigned the investigation. Impressed with Shane's intuitive abilities, the policeman befriends the boy and tries to get him to assist in capturing a serial killer. Other relationships among the main characters develop, to a rousing conclusion.

The descriptions of the havoc caused by the earthquake are graphic, and the characterizations excellent. Written at a fast pace, the novel grips the reader from cover to cover. The book is among the first issued under the new Mortalis imprint.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love Amongst the Ruins, March 19, 2011

By 

William Skipper "Pat" (City of Angels) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Last Nightingale: A Novel of Suspense (Mortalis) (Kindle Edition)

A blurb on her website by author Cara Black led me to this book. She's right: you can't put it down.

Much maligned Sargeant Randall Blackburn, a widower who lost both wife and child during childbirth, is consigned to the graveyard shift on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. He's doggedly pursuing a female serial killer who castrates her victims on his beat.

His shift is ending as the 1906 earthquake rips the city apart.

Twelve-year-old Shane Nightingale loses his entire family in the aftermath of the quake--but not in the way one might expect. Traumatized, he's left alone to survive--with his wits and work ethic as his only assets.

Together after young Shane remarkably helps Blackburn solve a murder, they discover the identity of (and face off with) the sadistic Surgeon.

Anthony Flacco does an admirable job of capturing the Dickensian world of the Bay Area at the turn of the last century. It literally devolves into Hell on Earth after the quake. The characters leap off the page, and the relationship between Blackburn and Nightingale is most engaging.

THE LAST NIGHTINGALE is elegantly written and thoroughly engrossing. A must-read for crime and suspense junkies.