Rescue: A John Cuddy Mystery [Hardcover]

Jeremiah Healy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1995

When ten-year-old Eddie Haldon's sister dies, John Cuddy promises to protect the boy, until young Eddie suddenly disappears, forcing John to begin what may be a wild goose chase through a world of greed and madness. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Healy's John Cuddy, the Boston-based PI with an old-fashioned code of honor, has starred now in 10 books, and his latest is a humdinger. Stopping on the highway to help a young woman change a tire, Cuddy is reminded by the awkward kid with her of a buddy he lost in Vietnam?and always felt guilty about?and promises to help if the boy should ever need it. Next day the driver is found dead and the boy has disappeared. Without missing a beat, Cuddy takes up the case, finds the boy's uptight religious parents and finds also a scary Southerner who may have killed the girl and who seems obsessed with a tub-thumping religious evangelist based in the Florida Keys. True to his code, Cuddy is off to Florida and, eventually, after a lot of skilfully laid-on local color and another murder, to a slam-bang climax as the horrible secret of what has appeared to be a run-of-the-mill sect is revealed. The plot is no more than serviceable, and the religious-right villain may be over the top. But the writing is deft and clean, the moments of violent action blood-curdlingly convincing and the zany Keys atmosphere is caught better than anyone has done it since John D. Macdonald. An elderly retired Navy man and his wife, who help out in the crunch, are beautifully drawn and deeply touching. Only a certain sexual complacency about Cuddy (he thinks he's catnip to women) prevents him from being an ideal Eye. Rights: Jed Mattes.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

If there's one thing we've learned in nine previous John Cuddy novels, it's that the Boston private eye keeps his promises. When Cuddy stops to help a young woman change a flat, the woman's companion, 10-year-old Eddie, extracts a promise: if Eddie is ever lost, Cuddy will find him. Shortly thereafter, the car is found abandoned and the woman dead, but there's no sign of Eddie. A promise is a promise, and Cuddy takes up the search, which takes him initially to New Hampshire, where he endures a chilling encounter with Eddie's fundamentalist parents and a deadly encounter with a backwoods zealot who makes those Deliverance guys seem downright agreeable. From there, it's down to Florida to the world headquarters of the Church of the Lord Vigilant. Something's wrong at the church compound, and Cuddy is positive Eddie is inside. With the aid of a retired military man, Cuddy does his damndest to keep his promise to a frightened little boy. We should all have such a guardian angel. One of the best entries in a consistently outstanding series. Wes Lukowsky

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Atria; First Edition edition (March 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671898779
• ISBN-13: 978-0671898779
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,391,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeremiah Healy, a former Sheriff's Officer and Military Police Lieutenant, is a graduate of Rutgers College and the Harvard Law School. Healy is also the creator of the John Francis Cuddy private-investigator series and (under the pseudonym "Terry Devane") the Mairead O'Clare legal-thriller series, both set primarily in Boston. Healy has written eighteen novels and over sixty short stories, sixteen of which works have won or been nominated for the Shamus Award. He served as the President of the International Association of Crime Writers ("IACW") from 2000-2004, and he was the International Guest of Honour at the 34th World Mystery Convention in Toronto during October, 2004. Three years ago, Healy concluded his term as a member of the Mystery Writers of America's National Board of Directors.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Promises Promises, December 4, 2001

By 

Dan (Dallas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rescue: A John Cuddy Mystery (Hardcover)

You or I wouldn't stop to help a stranger.
On the side of the road?
With a flat?
Never.
Admit it.
Be real.
It isn't practical, it isn't safe and it is a mishmosh of complications waiting to entangle you.
We, you or I, wouldn't do it.
John Francis Cuddy did.
What happens after that is exactly why we wouldn't have stopped to begin with----it gets very IMpractical...it becomes very UNsafe and the hodgepodge of complications unfold so intensely that Cuddy regrets a spur of the moment promise made to an insignificant child, made after brief eye contact that held then flickered....a promise only half-heartedly ventured.
A promise that comes back to haunt him.
What happens when you feel an obligation to 'live up' to expectations? What happens when it is your expectations of yourself that you have to 'live up' to?
It gets complicated.

RESCUE could be the first Cuddy mystery you read( I hope not but it could be) and you would still be involved, committed and interested. This story is topical, current, and thought provoking while at the same time highly entertaining.
Read RESCUE. Read it---then ask yourself; the next time you bypass a stranded motorist, how you feel now?
Promises, promises.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good quick read., July 7, 2000

By 

David White (NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rescue (Mass Market Paperback)

This was my first John Cuddy mystery, and it was definitely a worthwhile read. Healy shows off his hero's code of honor in this book, as Cuddy promises to help a young boy and then comes through. The novel is entertaining, a few of the murders gruesome, and the finale, well done. There are a few incidents where it seemed the author had backed himself into a corner and needed a bit of a overwritten solution with one of the characters (not to give anything away). Overall, a fun read, a decent villain, and just a plain good PI novel. Not his best, but not bad either.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complex characters ratchet up the suspense, February 3, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rescue: A John Cuddy Mystery (Hardcover)

On the trail of a missing boy, Healy's Boston private eye John Francis Cuddy also makes it to Florida, by way of rural New Hampshire. As the story opens, Cuddy stops to help a boy and his teenage companion, Melinda, change a flat tire. They vanish into the roadside woods when a new pick-up truck, also with New Hampshire plates, pulls up.

The truck leaves but the pair's car turns up at the scene of a drowning. The dead girl resembles Melinda but her face is unrecognizable, smashed up, according to the police, by the rocks in the water. Cuddy, unconvinced, goes looking for the boy, who reminds him of a dead buddy in Vietnam.

He traces the boy's home to Elton, New Hampshire, where the taciturn police are unhelpful and the the boy's even more taciturn parents heighten Cuddy's suspicions with their spooky religious zeal. A run-in with the driver of the pick-up results in a gruesome killing in self-defense with a rather shocking aftermath. It also results in Cuddy's next lead.

Armed with false identification and an illegal gun, Cuddy heads for the Florida Keys (stopping off at the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. for a poignant visit) to investigate an evangelical religious organization where he suspects the boy is being kept.

But the heavily secured compound is open only to privileged church members. Unable to gain entrance, even by a substantial donation to the charismatic leader, and stonewalled on all sides by close-mouthed Keys denizens, Cuddy must resort to more ingenious - and dangerous - methods of penetrating the compound.

Healy's novels are seamless works of investigation, suspense, and character. Cuddy's voice is strong and individual. A man of action, whose vulnerable side is haunted by his past, his grief for his dead wife and his new love for a younger girlfriend, Cuddy pulls the reader into his life.

Passages of description integrate thoroughly with the story, giving the reader the feel of being there. The vivid plot is fleshed out with people who make their way through life on the edges of society, some by choice, some by necessity. An absorbing page-turner.