"Matthew Langway is no Cuddy, and this slickly plotted, arid little puzzle is miles below the talented author's most memorable work."
John Francis Cuddy (Spiral, 1999, etc.) must be out of town, because when Kenny Van Horne is kidnapped, his great-grandfather, millionaire Beacon Harbor (Mass.) tank seller General Alexander Van Horne, calls instead on Matthew Langway, the private eye who helped design his 27-acre compound's elaborate security system.
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"These 17 cases for Boston shamus John Francis Cuddy, most of them models of the form, include five Shamus nominees and a couple of others——Someone to Turn Out the Lights' and 'Spin-a-rama——that are miracles of resourcefulness, economy, righteousness, and compassion."
Healy (The Stalking of Sheilah Quinn, p. 781, etc.) is the most consistently successful writer of private-eye stories since Ross Macdonald.
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"A waste of Healy's talent likely to appeal only to hardcore lawyer-haters."
In a break from his highly regarded John Cuddy series (The Only Good Lawyer, 1998, etc.), Healy makes his legal-eagle heroine more victim than detective.
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"Looks like Cuddy's 12th will be a bust—unless there's a last-minute burst of evidence whose timing puts this case well below Invasion of Privacy (1996)."
A successful Boston divorce lawyer has been executed; the estranged husband of his latest client, a churlish bigot, has been arrested for the murder.
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Russian ÇmigrÇ Olga Evorova's high-powered job in a Boston bank gives her plenty of access to databases, but she still can't find out anything about her closemouthed boyfriend Andrew Dees.
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"You may abhor the bad guys, but you just want to pinch the avenger."
The day after John Francis Cuddy stops to help a birthmarked kid named Eddie Haldon and his uneasy companion, Melinda, change a flat tire en route from New Hampshire to Boston, a floater off South Boston shows every sign of being Melinda, with no sign of Eddie at all.
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"None of it helps a story that starts with intriguing possibilities but disintegrates as it pursues its clumsy and unbelievable plot."
Healy is in less than top form here as John Cuddy, his wily, Boston-based PI (Foursome, 1993, etc.) takes on a two-pronged investigation for gentle, grief-stricken Pearl Rivkind and cold- fish pharmacist William Proft.
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"Boston's mean streets and Maine's peaceful waters provide the richly contrasting background for a sometimes chilling, always compelling story: Healy's best to date."
"Cuddy's bloodless romance with assistant D.A. Nancy Meagher; her cat's medical problems; a parade of characters who'd be mute without their all-purpose four-letter words; and a tortoiselike pace—all add up to torpid, under-par fare from an old hand who usually satisfies."
"But nothing can save Andrus—and only the vivid characters, lots of Marathon lore, and the Boston backdrop salvage the far- fetched plot in this flawed but lively entertainment."
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