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The Man Who Never Returned: A Novel

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'The Man Who Never Returned,' by Peter Quinn doesn't require you to be of a certain age and a native New Yorker. It does help, however.

Mr. Quinn is of a certain age, is a native New Yorker, grew up in a political atmosphere, worked in one as an adult, and has been forever fascinated by the disappearance of Judge Joseph Force Crater since sometime between birth and learning the multiplication tables.

So, if you're old enough to remember the Savoy Plaza, the Third Avenue El, and of course Penn Station before it was torn down and replaced by what still makes some people cry, then there is good likelihood that the fictionalized account of solving New York's longest running missing persons case is for you.

It is 1955 and Fintan Dunne, Peter Quinn's free-lance detective has been retained by a media mogul to solve the Crater case, just in time for the 25th anniversary of the Judge's permanent disappearance that will neatly coincide with a magazine launch by media mogul's publishing empire. The Judge has been missing since August 6,1930, after hailing a cab (not yellow) upon leaving a restaurant on West 45th Street after having dinner with some people. He was actually unheard from for a month before anyone officially notified anyone that perhaps something happened to him. And he had friends. And a wife.

The Judge Crater case is a true story. The Judge has been missing for 80 years. This is longer than Jimmy Hoffa, and just as unexplained. No doubt someone's speculation is true. But which one?

Mr. Quinn's detective, Fintan Dunne, through logic, interviews, old police contacts, favors and speculation of his own, solves the case. Or, does he?

Of course we know, however, that Judge Crater is still considered missing, and the circumstances unexplained. But after reading the book you do accept that the Judge is still missing. Yes, but should he be?

As Mr Quinn observes, if the interest of the living brings some comfort to the dead, then whatever the circumstances of the Judge's demise, he's resting more than comfortably somewhere.

[...]

Probably few people younger than 50 can identify the famously missing Judge Crater, but many are about to be educated. Peter Quinn's new novel is stylish, noirish, and a fun read. Disabuse yourself that it's just a speculative policier. You can read it as an exotic (sometimes erotic) labyrinthine drama or as a series of trenchant character studies, best of which is the indomitable ex-cop Fintan Dunne, an apostate Catholic who like many Irish Civil Servants just wants to survive until early retirement. I view the novel as a rich cultural history of New York City from the Thirties to the Fifties--as authentic as the era's Elevated Subways and snap-brim fedoras. And well it should be, because the author is a fact-driven historian who happens to be congenitally proud of his Bronx-Irish heritage. Like the media frenzy attending three-year-old Kathy Fiscus's fall into an abandoned California well in 1949 (Woody Allen's "Radio Days") and the daily updated saga of spelunker W. Floyd Collins, trapped alive in a Kentucky cave in 1925 (Billy Wilder's "Ace in a Hole"), Judge Crater's story is played out largely in the Old Media. The "newish" news media likewise is crucial to the Judge's story. Imagine if CNN, Fox News and MSNBC were on hand to search for Crater using real-time helicopter shots and "24/7 in-depth coverage"? It would make OJ's Bronco chase look like a slo-mo saunter over warm chocolate. Nothing about "The Man Who Never Returned" is slow; the pages turn themselves. Recall that "The Grapes of Wrath" was filmed only one year after Steinbeck's bestseller debuted in 1939. Pray that Hollywood options Quinn's tattoo-less book before the Swedes yet again checkmate our movie-making midgets.

On one level this is just a brilliantly written, tight, engaging mystery novel - when you get into it and realize it is based partly on a historical truth - so meticulously researched by Quinn - well that just makes it a classic. Brilliant read. Impressive writer.

It's a great pleasure, all too rare, to read a book which is well written. This is one of those rare books. The sentences are well-structured and read smoothly -- effortlessly, which makes reading them so pleasurable. And the relationships between parts of a sentence, its clauses and phrases, are always clear: no dangling modifiers or ambiguous antecedents here.

The story is interesting, and it's the story that attracted me to the book in the first place. The year is 1955, and Fintan Dunne, former police officer, OSS operative, and private detective, now retired, is hired to find out what happened to Judge Joseph Force Crater, who disappeared on the evening of August 6, 1930 -- 25 years earlier. Dunne and much of the plot are fiction. Crater and his disappearance are nonfiction. The 1950s setting is very well done, from clothing styles to manners to news to television. The pace is a bit slow, though not annoyingly so. I enjoyed the way the author tied everything together: very satisfying.

Great piece of speculative fiction solving the unsolved mystery of what ever happened to Judge Crater. Peter Quinn, one of the foremost writers on New York history, spins an intriguing tale that ends up both satisfying and thought provoking.

If you like mysteries. . . If you like history. . . If you want to learn more about New York City. . . You'll enjoy Peter Quinn's (who just happens to be an old friend and former workmate in Gov. Hugh Carey's Albany press office) latest novel which combines these elements into a well written package. Peter has taken a real life situation and with clever fictional narrative made it come to life. A respected judge exits a New York City building, hails a taxi and disappears forever. How can that be? What really happened? Perhaps Quinn's clever fictional narrative may be closer to the mark than anyone knows. It gives closure, of a sort, to a real life (and death) mystery. Available in bookstores and through Amazon.com

I read "Hour of the Cat" (set in the late 30's) by Peter Quinn a few years ago and enjoyed the period detail and the character of Fintan Dunne, ex-cop, private investigator trying to get by. Now he's back trying to find the long lost Judge Crater in 1955, older, more financially secure but still the cop/cynic that makes for a wonderful character. Quinn does another fine job of bringing us back to an earlier time, NYC in the 50s. There were still cocktail lounges, not just pubs, black and white TV was in, and cabs came in more than one color.

"The Man Who Never Returned" should appeal to mystery buffs and urban historians in equal measure. It will also bring back to mind a time when the cops were Irish, the political system worked (for those who knew the ropes), and newspapers were still powerful. Quinn has a good eye for the time period and a good ear for New York dialogue, especially the variety practiced by cops, hookers, newspapermen and politicians. Using fact and history to set up his story, this book pulls you in right away. It's a mystery that will cause you to be entertained and to think about the things taken for granted.

This novel is a true happening but the conclusion in reality has never been revealed. I believe Peter Quinn has searched into the case so intently that he found the secrets behind the disappearance of "the Judge". I like historical novels and to me this was history. When I finished reading the book I immediately "googled" to find out how much was actual and found that most of it was. I was not around during that era but the concept of the story was exciting and what we know to be true. This is written, as always, with clarity and fact. Mr Quinn is a great author and I have read each of his books and highly recommend them.

There may be other writers who could have worked up a novel on this fascinating subject, but only Peter Quinn was born to do so. Himself the son of a New York Supreme Court Justice and a bona fide -- not amateur -- historian, Quinn knows New York City, in all of its tumbling manifestations through the decades, at least as well as Dickens knew London. And here he takes on the ultimate New York mystery: What happened to Judge Joseph F. Crater after he hailed a cab in midtown Manhattan 80 years ago this month, and -- well, never returned?

Peter Quinn doesn't know, but he got access to police records that probably no one else has ever pored through. So he takes new details as far as they will go and applies his extraordinary narrative and stylistic skills to expand the story to a surprising but convincing conclusion. The plotting is brilliant, and, weaving it, he completes the neat trick of vividly recreating two of those many New Yorks -- that of 1930 and 1955. For the case is solved after 25 fogbound years by Fintan Dunne, the Chandleresque private eye who first walked the pavement in Quinn's "Hour of the Cat."

And, oh yes, lest you get the impression that this is a superficial novel, among its delightful characters is a policeman-in-spite-of-himself who attends daily mass and compulsively quotes Dante.

In this novel, in which the fictional hero explores the real-life mystery of the disappearance of Judge Crater, Peter Quinn paints a wonderful picture of two New York Citys: the New York City of 1955 when the detective is going about his business, and the New York City of 1930, the year of Crater's disappearance. And both New Yorks are artfully painted, albeit in blacks and grays. The mystery driving the story takes a little while to pick up steam, and follows an unsurprising path filled with stock characters from 50's noir novels and films. The real and the fictional are blended seamlessly, and there's nothing wrong with that in Judge Crater's case (though his memory is certainly not helped by this version of the past), because the book is more about an era (in which it is true) than about particular events (in which it is false). I kept turning the pages both for the mystery and for the atmosphere.