A Single Eye: A Darcy Lott Mystery [Paperback]

Susan Dunlap (Author)

Book Description

Series: A Darcy Lott Mystery | Publication Date: May 28, 2008

Stuntwoman Darcy Lott can stare down any risky physical feat — until a mistake during a stunt injures Darcy's protegé. Significantly shaken and facing a crisis of confidence, Darcy calls upon her Buddhist beliefs and retreats to a monastery in the California redwoods. What she finds is anything but soul-centering: the monastery's enigmatic leader is poisoned, and an attempt is made on Darcy's own life. When harsh weather prevents Darcy from escaping the retreat, she and the other students pursue their meditation, even as the threat of murder lurks all around them. Darcy must overcome her own personal crisis in order to keep herself — as well as the other practitioners — safe.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Anthony-winner Dunlap, author of the Jill Smith mysteries (Sudden Exposure, etc.) and Kiernan O'Shaughnessy series (A Pious Deception, etc.), introduces another brilliant but vulnerable heroine, Darcy Lott, a stuntwoman with a secret. After a stunt goes awry and a young protégé is seriously injured, Darcy, a Buddhist, retreats to Redwood Canyon Monastery, deep in California redwood country, where she delivers a message from her Manhattan roshi, or spiritual teacher, to the camp's leader, the enigmatic Leo Garson–roshi. Rather than enlightenment, Darcy finds a Zen camp awash in greed, lies and ultimately murder as she investigates Leo's sudden illness and the disappearance of a young Zen student six years earlier. Dunlap fans are sure to welcome this new addition to her oeuvre, while remaining hopeful they may yet see more of Smith and O'Shaughnessy. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Dunlap returns after a long hiatus with a new sleuth, Darcy Lott, a movie stuntwoman and Zen practitioner. She is strong but afraid of being alone in the woods. After a stunt goes wrong and sends her plummeting into a forest, her Zen master sends her to a retreat in a remote redwood forest in California to face her fear. He also wants her to deliver a message to the head of the monastery, Leo Garson-roshi. Once she arrives, she discovers that the monastery is full of secrets. A student disappeared several years ago, and everyone fears that he is dead. Leo says that he plans to leave the community after this retreat, which he dedicates to the missing student. Strange things begin to happen, and Darcy fears that Leo's life is in danger. Anthony and Macavity Award-winning author Dunlap has created an engaging new female detective. Fans of her Kiernan O'Shaughnessy series will welcome Dunlap back and eagerly await Darcy's next case. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; First Trade Paper Edition edition (May 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582434190
• ISBN-13: 978-1582434193
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,435,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Welcome back, Susan Dunlap, December 23, 2006

By 

Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Single Eye: A Darcy Lott Mystery (Hardcover)

I was a great fan of Susan Dunlap's early work, especially the Jill Smith police officer series. Dunlap lovingly recreated every corner of Berkeley, California, which I knew well at the time. Later her series featured a meter reader and, I believe, an art dealer. Jill remained my favorite.

Darcy Lott shows promise as another series heroine with an off-beat fascinating occupation: a stunt woman in Hollywood. Here we meet her not on a movie set, but in the closed confines of a rigorous Zen retreat. With her gift for evoking place, Dunlap helps us feel as though we're right there with Darcy: living in simple quarters, eating gruel, enduring hours of meditation, feeling cold and damp in the woods, and (worst of all) living at close quarters with some pretty difficult people.

Darcy doesn't get much time to experience peace and healing. Early on she's appointed assistant to the roshi. She ends up helping out in unexpected ways and, of course, figuring out what happened to the resident who went missing so long ago.

Writers take a risk when they begin a new series by taking the heroine out of her element. Sarah Stewart Taylor introduced her heroine Sweeney St Charles at a rather dreary houseparty. I almost gave up on the series with the first volume, which would have been a mistake. Sweeney comes across as much more interesting when she's back home.

And I suspect the same will be true of Darcy Lott. Here in the monastery she's a bit of a busybody as well as an outsider. I'd like to see more of her interactions with her delightful dog, her family and her life on the Hollywood sets. Jill Smith was phobic about heights (revealed in one novel); Darcy turns out to be phobic about walking in the woods. Both phobias have merit. Anyone can get harmed by falling from a great height. And aren't we all advised to avoid hiking alone?

Fans of the Jill Smith series may be disappointed. Jill Smith was an enjoyable, flawed three-dimensional character, someone we'd imagine meeting for coffee or a drink. Her colorful supporting cast came with identifiable quirks that added a light touch. Who could forget Herman Ott and his yellow shirts?

I also miss Dunlap's intricate plots with satisfying solutions (A Dinner to Die For was one of my favorites). This time we're asked to care about finding who killed a strange man who died several years ago.

Here I didn't find the supporting characters especially likeable. Experienced mystery readers will figure out the heroine's first mini-puzzle, when she's offered a ride to the monastery, almost immediately. We can guess the villain pretty easily too, although I was beginning to like that character.

In making her heroine a practicing Buddhist, Dunlap also faces a less obvious challenge: the reader's context. Many readers will know practicing Buddhists. Many of us also have read Natalie Goldberg's book, The Great Failure: A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth. I found myself remembering Goldberg's roshi each time Darcy entered the roshi's inner sanctum for a private meeting.

So bottom line, I'd say Dunlap remains a skilled mystery writer. I just hope next time she moves her heroine to a more enjoyable venue, gives her some more colorful sidekicks, and tightens the plot. And to be fair, maybe it's my own bias: being stranded in the woods with a bunch of strangers gives me claustrophobia, not enlightenment. And I have no intention of joining a retreat to overcome my fears.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Her best book!, February 7, 2007

By 

David W Skibbins - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Single Eye: A Darcy Lott Mystery (Hardcover)

I am a voracious reader of mysteries. I feel it is unprofessional for a writer to disparage another writer, so mostly I keep my opinions to myself. But every so often a book comes along that jumps instantly into my Best of All Times list. this is one of those!

Susan has been out of the mystery field for a long time, but she is back with a masterpiece. I have 15 years in a meditative spiritual practice, and I was a bit leery of a mystery set in a 2 week Zen retreat in the California redwoods. I have sat those retreats, and I feared that true spiritual work was going to be misrepresented, trivialized or inaccurately portrayed.

Actually, Susan has created a book that is part spiritual teaching and still is an intense provocative mystery. I didn't guess the killer, and the puzzle aspect was done perfectly. The characters were well cast, and completely believable. The plot was compelling, with the spunky protagonist, Darcy Lott, as a stunt actor who has to face her inner catastrophic fears and still deal powerfully with real outer challenges, including stopping a killer from striking again.

This is the first book of her next series, and I am thinking of breaking into Susan's house so I can get my hands on the manuscript of the next book in the series. If you love traditional mysteries with a great message, an intellectually challenging plot, and characters you will miss when you finally end the book: then buy this book!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new world from a talented writer, January 26, 2007

By 

Cathy Pickens (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Single Eye: A Darcy Lott Mystery (Hardcover)

I was thrilled to see Susan Dunlap's return to the mystery bookshelf. I still miss meter reader Veejay Haskell, and Jill Smith and the characters that inhabited her Berkeley. But this book gave me a glimpse of another world with which I was not familiar, just as Dunlap's earlier books did so invitingly. Darcy's stunt career offers lots of possibilities for the future, but this introduction (rather darker than her earlier mystery series) had a richness that will appeal to readers who like depth and confident experience.