Terminal Island: A Jack Liffey Mystery [Hardcover]

John Shannon (Author)

Book Description

Series: Jack Liffey | Publication Date: March 29, 2004

Terminal Island is the latest book from top mystery writer John Shannon. While detective Jack Liffey is convalescing from a collapsed lung from his last case, he is called to his hometown of San Pedro, shipyard to Los Angeles, where an inexplicable string of mysterious accidents have befallen local residents; a child turns up missing, a fishing boat sinks, a life’s work is destroyed—and Japanese playing cards with cryptic notes are left at the scenes. At the same time, Jack begins to read snatches from the diary of Joe Ozaki, an enraged Japanese American ex-Green Beret who has vowed to avenge U.S. misdeeds against his father and other Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Eventfully Jack crosses paths with Joe Ozaki, when the Green Beret targets the detective’s own father. The showdown between Jack and Ozaki comes to a head on a sealed-off Terminal Island, where escape is difficult and the final outcome anyone’s guess.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this morally complex and absorbing novel, Jack Liffey, who specializes in finding lost children, is recovering from injuries sustained on his last case (2003's City of Strangers). Now his doctor, his daughter and his lady friend are all insisting he stop working for a while. But he's unable to resist a call for help from a childhood friend whose teenage son is kidnapped. It's only the first in a string of bizarre crimes, each punctuated with a Japanese playing card and a cryptic message. In a setup vaguely reminiscent of Mystic River, the police lieutenant heading the investigation is a third childhood friend, now fighting his own demons, and the locus of the crimes is the working-class town where they all grew up and where a thriving Japanese community was obliterated by WWII internment camps. The book's emotional power comes from Shannon's beautifully developed theme of intergenerational family relationships. The perpetrator's diary, paralleling the investigation, shows true filial love and honor but also the twisted sort of vengeance that begets madness. Liffey himself is caught between protecting the bigoted father he despises and the wise, compassionate 16-year-old daughter he adores, and he's conflicted about the growing relationship between them. The story climaxes with a highly original escape scene and an upside-down ending that simultaneously surprises and feels just right.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The seventh Jack Liffey mystery holds to the same high standard as its predecessors. Liffey, the finder of lost children, is still suffering the aftereffects of a bomb blast in City of Strangers (2003) when he's reluctantly drawn into a case by Ken Steelyard, a childhood friend who's now a cop. A series of strange incidents--an abducted goth kid, a wrecked model-train layout, a sunken fishing boat--leads them to a crime in the past that's being avenged by an unusual perpetrator. The word mystery seems unfairly limiting here. The folks in marketing might balk, but because Liffey's cases can't be cracked without examination of beliefs, behaviors, and ideas, subtitling the book A Jack Liffey Inquiry might be more apropos. Terminal Island really portrays the collision of two tragic figures, the unhappy Steelyard and an intellectually atrophied antagonist obsessed with honor and revenge. Liffey and Steelyard track clues, and there's a thrilling chase at the end, but the meat of the book is in Shannon's rumination on topics like race, warrior codes and human frailty, and responsibility for sins of fathers. A terrific hard-boiled series offering a blinders-off look at ethnic L.A. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; First Edition edition (March 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786713372
• ISBN-13: 978-0786713370
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,610,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jack Liffey Survives!, April 19, 2004

By 

Rapid Reader (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Terminal Island: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Hardcover)

Thank goodness it's not Jack Liffey that's terminal! Here's a wonderful new book that takes us back to Jack's hometown. We even get to meet a family member of his that he's hidden up to now. It's almost impossible to put this book down once you start it. Be warned!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and thoughtful mystery--Wow, August 26, 2004

By 

booksforabuck "BooksForABuck" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Terminal Island: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Hardcover)

Jack Liffey is recouperating from a collapsed lung when an old friend--from his elementary school days--calls for a favor. Police Lieutenant Ken Steelyard has a problem. Someone is has grabbed a San Pedro youth, planted an explosive, and damaged the train set that is Steelyard's life. Since Liffey investigates missing children, maybe he can help. Against the advice of his doctor and girlfriend, Liffey accepts--and launches himself into a strange world where the clues are carefully scripted Japanese playing cards--with the kanji characters for 'no, no' stamped on them.

As Steelyard and Liffey investigate, the clues point back to the horrible days of World War II when Japanese-Americans were rounded up, sent to internment camps, and lost all of their possessions. Terminal Island, the small island that makes up a part of the port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, was once home to a thriving Japanese fishing community. Could someone be revenging himself for this long-ago dishonor? It hardly seems possible that an survivor of these American concentration camps could be terrorising modern Los Angeles, but there is definitely a connection.

Author John Shannon shines his powerful spotlight into San Pedro and Terminal Island--parts of Los Angeles that retain a part of their history despite the radical changes that Los Angeles imposes on itself regularly--and into the long-denied reality of American fear and injustice. Jack Liffey makes a wonderful hero--a man who cares, who wants to do what is right in a morally ambiguous world, and a man who struggles to make the world better for his daughter and her friends.

TERMINAL ISLAND is a powerfully moving story--with plenty of fast-paced action, thoughtful examination of the way the world works, and an ultimately positive message. I admit that coming from the San Pedro area made me suspicious at first--but Shannon won me over completely. I strongly recommend this book--even if you're not an Angeleno.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Complex and Compelling Portrait of Passions and Prejudice, February 22, 2005

By 

Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Terminal Island: A Jack Liffey Mystery (Hardcover)

The great joy of "Terminal Island" is John Shannon's ability to address the many ethnic/socio-economic/generational schisms that make up Los Angeles without slowing the nimble pace of his narrative. As Jack Liffey struggles to catch the person responsible for a string of connected crimes, he falls for a police officer named Gloria Ramirez, a Native American who was raised by Latino parents who taught her to hate her own heritage. Liffey is forced to confront and eventually offer help to his viciously-bigoted father, Declan. But Liffey's Good Samaritan daughter believes that her newfound grandfather can discard his ugly beliefs by getting to know her African-American friends. Shannon also intersperses the chapters with entries from the perpetrator's diary, paralleling the investigation, giving us insight into the damaged soul's desire to redress old wrongs and bring honor back to his family that was "relocated" out of Terminal Island's once thriving Japanese fishing community during World War II. The result is a complex and compelling portrait of people linked by both place and past transgressions. In the end, we wonder if we can ever run from our former selves into a future where we are better people who can improve this world rather than tear it down. As Liffey tries to reason with the perpetrator of the crimes, he sounds as if he's trying to convince himself that forgiveness is, indeed, a great virtue: "[W]ar asks too much of a human being. They weren't bad people to start with, and most of them have healed. Time heals. Love heals. Work heals. The human mind is resilient, it finds a way." If Jack Liffey and his father are any guide, these words have truth at their core and there is hope for us all. (The full version of this review first appeared in The Elegant Variation: http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar)