THE ARMCHAIR REVIEWER
Allen J. Hubin


ROBERT J. RAY – Merry Christmas, Murdock. Delacorte Press, hardcover, 1989. Dell, paperback, 1990.

ROBERT RAY Merry Christmas Murdock

   L. A. private eye Matt Murdock is back, celebrating a holiday in decidedly unfestive fashion in Merry Christmas, Murdock. Here the past rises up before Murdock in two ways.

   Cindy Duke, a teen-ager who had maybe saved his life a couple of years earlier by driving him out of a burning canyon, asks him to find her father. He teaches in Wisconsin and came to L. A. in response to Cindy’s cry for help, raged at his ex-wife, battered her brother’s car with a baseball bat, ranged through a shopping mall in a failing search for Cindy, and disappeared.

   Meanwhile, another teen-ager, Heather Blasingame, lies in a coma from a hit-and-run encounter with a vehicle at that same mall. She’s the daughter of Jane Blasingame, feisty Texas state senator, and the senator (though with considerable reluctance) hires Murdock to supplement what seems an inept police investigation.

   These two cases are of course related, and powerful interests — not only Cindy’s grandfather Wheeler Duke and Duke Construction — are willing to go to about any lengths to keep Matt’s nose out of these matters.

   Vivid, active tale.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier,
       Vol. 12, No. 4, Fall 1990.


        The Matt Murdock series —

1. Bloody Murdock (St. Martin’s, 1986)
2. Murdock for Hire (St. Martin’s, 1987)
3. Dial ‘M’ For Murdock (St. Martin’s, 1988)
4. Merry Christmas, Murdock (Delacorte, 1989)
5. Murdock Cracks Ice (Delacorte, 1992)
6. Murdock Tackles Taos (Camel Press, 2013)

Bibliographic Notes: For more on the author and this last book in the series, published after a gap of 21 years, go here. For more on Matt Murdock himself. check out Kevin Burton Smith’s essay on him here.