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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dunning Makes A Great Return, March 10, 2001
I am so fortunate that I acquired a signed first edition of this book, because I will treasure it for years to come. In his newest, Dunning crafts a story of a writer, caught up in a mystery due to a lost love. Stumbling through America in the war years, he manages to find a way to bring the truth to life, but along the way he finds himself in the broadcast radio game, and it is there that his talent truly comes alive. Dunning tops the story off with a coda that leaves the reader guessing as to whom Jack/Jordan finally spends the rest of his life with. I haven't given up on the return of Cliff Janeway, the "Bookman" and hope that Dunning will return to his hero in the future, but "Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime" is an outstanding read. Remembering my parents & grandparents talking about sitting around the radio for hours to listen, learn and be entertained, I always wondered about the attraction - Dunning has helped put that in perspective by giving the reader a sense of the magic that was radio during the war years in the 30's and 40's. Obviously an expert on the topic, he wraps his knowledge around a well written mystery with a hero you can really care about and an interesting cast of bit players. I am a mystery/thriller buff, and don't often come across truly great writing - the thrill is the mystery itself, the element of surprise and sometimes disaster. Dunning can do it all. He can share a mystery with his readers but the quality of his own writer's craftsmanship appears throughout the novel, and makes it come alive..."He dreamed that there was no war. Got up at three and exploded into his work, as if the answer to everything lay in some unwritten script still hidden away in his mind..."; Dunning captures the thrill and the fulfillment of being a great writer and shares it with all of us who have never known that rush. Please read "Two O'clock Eastern Wartime", you will have no regrets.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Book, Amazing Writer!, May 25, 2004
Dunning, where have you been all my life? From the very first words of this book, you know that you are in the hands of a master. This is the most beautifully written mystery I've ever read! The pace is leisurely, but that's all to the good. By taking its time, the book gives you the chance to really get to know the main character, Jack/Jordan, and he is one of the most compelling characters in fiction. 1940s America and life in a small-town radio station are beautifully evoked. What impressed me most is that, unlike many historical novels which seem to be a frozen slice in time with no antecedents, this book has enough references to culture and events in the 1930s that the wartime in which the book is set makes sense and has context. Jack himself, who has bummed around race tracks doing menial jobs like horse walking, seems very much a man of the 1930s Depression, rootless and scraping by, but looking for something to cling to. The mystery itself is satisfyingly complex. In fact, through most of the book, you're not even sure what the mystery is! Who is after Jack and why? I was sad to reach the end of the book, because I wanted to spend more time in this world.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Intimate Epic to Thrill and Treasure, December 14, 2000
The book gets 5 stars only because 6 are unavailable. This magnicicent recreation of a time, a place, and an atmosphere that will seem as foreign to most younger readers as the sands of Mars is a marvelous achievement. Plot-wise, it is a credible mystery that grips the reader from page one. But it is so much more than that. The book's depiction of the early days of radio (which, alas, were also, unbeknownst to either the protagonists or the real world, the beginning of the last days of radio)are so detailed and involving that they may bring the art form back! The characters are real, complex, credible, and, rare for a thriller (or ANY book nowadays), people you get to know as well as your own, disfunctional, family. A few months ago there was a higly hyped tome called "The Advocate" which took place during WWII. It was awful. This book recreates that time, the people, the country, in such a way as to almost make one sad one wasn't part of it. And those radio stories! If my words don't move you to read this, as a thriller, as an historical piece, as a character study, well... buy the darn thing and make up your own words! If you do, you will!
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