THE ARMCHAIR REVIEWER
Allen J. Hubin


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

ROBERT RAY Matt Murdock

   L.A. private eye Matt Murdock is back, celebrating a holiday in decidedly unfestive fashion in Merry Christmas, Murdock, by Robert Ray.

   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 teenager, 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 —

Bloody Murdock. St.Martin’s, 1986.

ROBERT RAY Matt Murdock

Murdock for Hire. St.Martin’s, 1987.
Dial “M” for Murdock. St.Martin’s, 1988.

ROBERT RAY Matt Murdock

Merry Christmas, Murdock. Delacorte, 1989.
Murdock Cracks Ice. Delacorte, 1992.