Customer Reviews

Shadows Still Remain LP: A Novel

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thirty-four years old NYPD Detective Darlene O'Hara leads the search for missing NYU student Francesca Pena. However, the day after the Thanksgiving weekend, the hunt ends when the teen's battered body is found in East River Park.

The police led by veteran Detective Cooney hone in on Pena's former boyfriend David McLain as the violence implies a crime of passion. O'Hara differs as something is not quite right. She focuses on Pena's life especially after she came to NYU on a full scholarship. O'Hara soon finds evidence that the perfect student worked at an escort service and strip club. Following up on a tattoo the killer carved on the victim, O'Hara finds another student with the same telltale mark.

Although not unique as the premise of the story line has been used a lot in mysteries, fans will enjoy SHADOWS STILL REMAIN, an entertaining New York City police procedural. O'Hara is an intriguing lead character as she defies her more experienced peers seeking a solution elsewhere even though none at first surface; that is until she begins to uncover the truth behind the façade of the perfect student. Fans will enjoy her investigation even if we know early one what to expect.

Harriet Klausner

In Shadows Still Remain Peter de Jonge (as in the frequent James Patterson co-author) creates O'Hara a beautiful, rash and ambitious detective. O'Hara "catches" her first murder case and is determined to work it so much so that she breaks all the rules of professionalism and police protocol. As she learns more about the victim, Franseca Pena, "the undisputed star...whose approval and messy snorts of laughter the others vie for", each new clue only begets more questions. Out of her league and damaging her career, O'Hara doggedly pursues the only avenue of redemption--solving her case.

Peter de Jonge unsurprising reads much like James Patterson. You'll find the same page turning elements and suspenseful drama amongst colorful descriptions like, "slushy rain slobbers all over the roof, and O'Hara tracks a fat brown droplet down the windshield." De Jonge however has gone darker and delivers a better than average police procedural story. If you novelized a Law and Order SVU script, you'd have the gist. The book is loaded with surprises and is a tough to solve who done it. The title is apt, as it leaves the reader with many questions and unresolved story lines, and one can only conclude that this may be the beginning of an exciting series.

I disappeared briefly from society when I picked this book up. Once I started, I could not put it down, and I didn't want it to end. An amazing read. The wordsmithing is brilliant and the story so cleverly evolves. The descriptions of the gritty, seamy side of New York City and characters who frequently find themselves there are vivid and engaging. Being familiar with the city, I found it to be a somewhat surreal experience to read it as I felt completely swept up in the sights and dives of the Lower East Side. I hope I get to read more of de Jonge's heroine detective in the future.

Peter De Jonge who has co-authored three books with James Patterson accomplishes something Patterson has not been able to do in a couple of years... and that is... write a compelling... interesting crime mystery... from start to finish. The author provides a fast-paced mystery that utilizes "Joseph Wambaugh-like"... lightly humorous... but accurate... character descriptions... of both good guys and bad. He also steers clear of the "Patterson-like" *SCHOOL-GIRL-GUSH" romantic interludes that make an adult reader feel like they have picked up a prepubescent girl's young romance novel.

The story takes place in the NYPD's Seventh Precinct... in and around the NYU campus. The protagonist is Detective Darlene (Dar) O'Hara a hard-drinking single mother... a self-described "BROOKLYN-IRISH"... with an eighteen-year-old son named Axl Rose O'Hara who is a freshman at the University of Washington. After introducing Dar and her trusty partner Serge Krekorian... the author displays a little humor describing some run of the mill... paltry crimes... and a cast of derelict local criminals... to get the readers familiar with both the personality of Dar and Serge... along with the integrated teamwork they display on a daily basis. Then on Thanksgiving, nineteen-year-old Francesca Pena... a Puerto Rican NYU sophomore on a track scholarship goes missing... thus creating a non-stop bevy of activity in and around the Seventh Precinct. Dar and Serge get the case... *BUT*... "if Pena's disappearance is upgraded to a homicide, she and Krekorian will only get to work it for seventy-two-hours. Then it will be turned over to Homicide South, and for O'Hara and Krekorian, it's back to burglaries and domestic disputes"... such as a local purse thief Astrid and her stroller and fake kids... and Dolores in her bathrobe.

The reader is given a literary tour of the underbelly of New York. From the projects... to cheap bars... to cheaper strip joints... to illegal escort services... to tattoo parlors... and then Pena's body is found nude... wrapped in a shower curtain in a disgusting bathroom in East River Park... and according to the ME... "THERE IS EXTENSIVE EVIDENCE OF TORTURE... THE VICTIM HAS BEEN REPEATEDLY AND SYSTEMATICALLY GOUGED, CUT AND BURNED, FRONT AND BACK, FROM ANKLES TO SHOULDERS... BLUNT TRAUMA"... MULTIPLE RAPES... "THE BODY IS COVERED FRONT AND BACK WITH APPROXIMATELY SIXTY GOUGES MADE WITH A CRUDE SERRATED BLADE... GOUGES RANGE WIDELY IN SIZE, SHAPE AND DEPTH... BODY HAS ALSO BEEN REPEATEDLY BURNED WITH A CIGARETTE LIGHTER AND SLICED WITH A SECOND KNIFE, ALTHOUGH THE NUMBER OF SLICING CUTS AND BURNS IS SIGNIFICANTLY SMALLER THAN THE GOUGES... THE GOUGING ALONE WOULD HAVE TAKEN SEVERAL HOURS AND CAUSED CONSIDERABLE LOSS OF BLOOD, BUT NOT NECESSARILY A FATAL ONE, AND ALTHOUGH THE VICTIM HAS BEEN SUBJECTED TO OVERWHELMING HOMICIDAL VIOLENCE, THERE IS NO CLEAR SINGLE CAUSE OF DEATH... THE LIVIDITY, OR BRUISING, SUGGESTS THE VICTIM DID NOT BLEED TO DEATH... I THINK SHE WAS TORTURED UNTIL HER HEART STOPPED."

Now that this case is officially a homicide... it must be turned over to the egomaniacal Detective Patrick Lowry... whose size and girth... six-foot-five and nearly four-hundred-pounds... matches the size of his ego. Dar is told to drop the case... but she has become too emotionally involved. Throughout the story the reader is taken via flashbacks to Dar's youth... and the author paints a picture of all the similarities between Dar and Francesca. Even a suspension doesn't keep Dar from continuing on the path she was ordered off. This is a well told... gritty... character driven... story... that keeps an adult's interest... from start to finish. Something Patterson hasn't accomplished in quite a while.

Note: In an unnecessary "bookish" tip of the hat to Patterson... on page twenty-three... the author in describing an absolutely inconsequential momentary background character... writes: "THE VICTIM, AFRICAN AMERICAN, APPROXIMATELY THIRTY-FIVE, SITS AT A TABLE ENJOYING HER COFFEE AND THE LATEST PATTERSON."

SHADOWS STILL REMAIN is a well written crime novel, but it lacks a quality that makes for a truly effective page turner. De Jonge obviously has creative talent, but there was very little in this novel that I found original or compelling.

The plot, involving a NYPD police detective's quest to solve the murder of a young college student, is pretty standard stuff, the kind of shopworn material you might find in a LAW AND ORDER rerun. I personally found a lot of the dialogue to be surprisingly flat. This novel is also relatively slow paced, which I found surprising from an author who co-wrote several books with James Patterson.

None of the characters struck me as particularly original, with the possible exception of the central character Detective Darlene O'Hara. Still, even O'Hara struck me as something of a cliche -- a highly competent, yet rebellious Irishwoman who constantly clashes with her superiors. Will O'Hara disobey her doltish commander and launch her own investigation of the crime? I think you already know the answer to that one. Michael Connelly treaded this type of territory many times before with his Harry Bosch novels, and he did a far better job of getting inside his main character's head.

Still, De Jonge is a skilled writer, and I enjoyed his vivid descriptions of New York City, as well as his social commentary on the people who live there (all done through the O'Hara character). I also found the novel's ending to have a rather surprising twist. SHADOWS STILL REMAIN is entertaining to read, even if its story doesn't seem to add up to very much.

Overall, this novel's okay, but others have done this type of thing better -- Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and Dennis Lehane readily come to mind. If your reading time is limited, go with one of them instead.

Dark things happen in New York City, and despite dealing with some of the darkest in his Shadows Still Remain, Peter de Jonge has produced a novel featuring characters you'd love to know -- and call friends -- as well as some you'll love to hate.
de Jonge keeps you guessing with a well-constructed plot that doesn't stop providing surprises until the final page. Although he broke into fiction as one of the James Patterson stable of co-authors, this is nothing like a Patterson beach read, instead offering the sophisticated writing of a Dennis Lehane or Stephen Dobyns. It's a tale that will keep you turning the pages, and that you won't soon forget once you're done.

I am so glad the good writers are mvong on their own away from J Patterson, as their books have alot more potiontial and are really worth reading. Not like Pattersons books anymore. I think he kicks them out way to fast and is to money hungry,, That is my thoughts.

It's been several years since I read one of Ed McBain's 87Th Precinct series but this took me right back to those days. The only difference is that the heroine in this book has slightly different feelings about the people she is dealing with. She relates to some of the crime victims like a mother would rather than a hardboiled NYC Police Detective. The book wastes no time dawdling. It moves right along often at a jog and it's easy reading because of the pithy style and lots of dialogue. Again, like a McBain thriller this one will probably end up as a film since so much of the dialogue already exists in the novel. McBain was a film writer in addition to a crime fiction superstar. This De Jonge book will also be easy to translate to film or video.
Detective Darlene O'Hara slogs her way through the dirty underbelly of NYC doing the grunt work that eventually finds and fits together the jigsaw puzzle of this murder story. She almost seems too beautiful to be doing this kind of work, but she has a knack for finding the dirty truth. This reviewer would be willing to bet that the reader won't figure out who the killer is before the arrest is made. This easy to read book is packed with surprises. It's a little like one of those colorful Russian dolls with one doll hidden inside another and then another and then another. The book has nothing to do with the Russian mob however. It's a good, effortless read although O'Hara's lack of sleep, lousy fast food diet and really heavy drinking even made this reviewer feel exhausted and almost ready for AA. Her taste in popular music keeps both her and the reader pumped up in the icy winter weather and forbidding and very mean streets of The Big Rotten Apple.
One difference in this book from other crime thrillers was the series of black and white photos of various locations described in the book. I'm not certain whether they hurt or helped the story since they seemed to be different than the mental pictures that were being produced in this reader's mind from reading the book's text.

Much as Bruce Wagner does for Los Angeles, Peter De Jonge (pronounced "de young") fills his New York with recognizable brands and establishments, rendering an authentic background for his well-realized characters. It's a contemporary take on the classic murder mystery and the puzzle holds up beautifully. Even after the whodunit is solved, dangling motivations remain, providing the reader with an even more satisfying coda. A terrific beach or airplane read!

Fiction is the purest form of storytelling. Peter De Jonge has used his writing skills to transform the reader. Though death is never pleasant, the reader is pleasantly surprised with whom the "bad guy" turns out to be. I felt as if it was I walking down the lonely streets of the lower east side, I tasted every drink that the heroine "Detective Darlene O'Hara" put to her lips and I'm thirsty for more. Bravo Peter!