SHEPARD RIFKIN – McQuaid in August. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1979. No paperback edition.

   Even though Damian McQuaid is a homicide detective, for the NYPD, this is definitely not your average sort of police procedural. It’s August, it’s hot, and McQuaid has only two days to solve a case on his own before someone discovers the body of the girl in whose apartment he spent the night.

   Finding the killer is not enough. Without the usual power of the police department behind him to help gather the evidence he needs, McQuaid is forced to resort to an intricate cat-and-mouse game of active harrassment in order to produce a “voluntary” confession.

   As a leading character, his excursions beyond the letter of the law evoke both admiration and a surprising lack of sympathy; part of the fascination reserved to the reader appears to be watching him stay, barely, on the side of sanity himself.

Rating:   A Minus.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 3, No. 6, Nov/Dec 1979 (very slightly revised). This review also appeared earlier in the Hartford Courant.


Bibliographic Data:

    The Lt. Damian McQuaid series —

McQuaid. Putnam 1974.

SHEPARD RIFKIN McQuaid

The Snow Rattlers. Putnam, 1977.
McQuaid in August. Doubleday, 1979.

   Not in the series is The Murderer Vine (Dodd, 1970), recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime (2008). It’s a work of fiction based on the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner) during the Freedom Summer voter registration drive.

   Rifkin’s other crime novel is Ladyfingers, a paperback original published by Gold Medal in 1969.