Tue 19 Jan 2010
Archived Review: JEREMIAH HEALY – Yesterday’s News.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews1 Comment
JEREMIAH HEALY – Yesterday’s News. Harper, hardcover, July 1989. Reprint paperback: Pocket; 1st printing, September 1990.
A lot of people think highly of Boston-based PI John Francis Cuddy, and I wish I were one of them. I find both him and his cases rather bland, although I’m always hopeful whenever I decide to try another of them.
This one falls into the same category, unfortunately, and it’s difficult to say exactly why. He’s hired by a female newspaper reporter to help her uncover a leak that led to the death of one of her sources — she’s working on a story involving corruption in the small seaport town of Nasharbor.
She’s dead before he can get there. Suicide, the local police say. Cuddy knows better.
Thus, a good beginning, a good picturesque locale, and the story seems only to inch on from there. Cuddy goes through the usual motions, gets a break on page 219, follows it up, and solves the case. And once he makes a deal — which he doesn’t call a deal– the whole affair is over, to everybody’s satisfaction, but mine.
And there in a nutshell, I think maybe I answered my own question.
[UPDATE.] 01-19-10. I wish I could tell you that I read another one in the series and really enjoyed it, but I can’t. It’s my fault, though, since (as far as I can recall) I haven’t read another in the series, and I ought to.
The John Francis Cuddy Series:
1. Blunt Darts (1984)
2. The Staked Goat (1986)
3. So Like Sleep (1987)
4. Swan Dive (1988)
5. Yesterday’s News (1989)
6. Right To Die (1991)
7. Shallow Graves (1992)
8. Foursome (1993)
9. Act Of God (1994)
10. Rescue (1995)
11. Invasion Of Privacy (1996)
12. The Only Good Lawyer (1998)
13. Spiral (1999)
14. The Concise Cuddy [Collection] (1998)
15. Cuddy Plus One [Collection] (2003)
February 11th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
I liked the Cuddy books, as a sort of antidote to Parker and Spenser, though the business of going to the cemetery to talk to his dead wife wore a little thin. Though now in retrospect I can’t recall much other than the cemetery trips.