ED GORMAN – Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Berkley; paperback reprint; December 2002. Hardcover edition: Carroll & Graf, January 2001.

   Not to make it too personal, but September 1959 was the month I started my senior year in high school, and that’s the very same autumn in which this nostalgic trip back to small-town America takes place. I was younger then than Gorman’s private eye protagonist, Sam McCain, but I remember drive-in movies, rock-and-roll, drugstore lunch counters, Gold Medal paperbacks, and Edd “Kookie” Byrnes.

   I also remember some of the darker sides of life in the late 50s: polio; segregation; Khrushchev’s threats; the remnants of McCarthyism. And it’s the Communist menace, or threat thereof, that forms the background for this latest of three mysteries Gorman has placed in Black River Falls, Iowa.

   The first death is that of a liberal former member of Truman’s administration, and the body count slowly but surely begins to climb from there. As good as the mystery is, even more enjoyable is Sam’s love life, which to put it mildly, is a mess, and I identified with every awkward moment of it.

   Along with an unerring sense of that not-so-long-ago period of American history, Gorman’s quiet but sarcastically obvious sense of humor is what makes this book worth looking for. Very enjoyable.

[UPDATE] 12-02-08. After a gap of three years — too long! — Sam McCain made his seventh appearance last year in Fools Rush In, which I haven’t read yet. I will have to do something about that.

      The Day the Music Died. Carroll & Graf, Jan 1999; Berkley, pb, Apr 2000.

      Wake Up Little Susie. Carroll & Graf, Jan 2000; Berkley, pb, Feb 2001.
      Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Carroll & Graf, Jan 2001; Berkley, pb, Dec 2002.
      Save the Last Dance For Me. Carroll & Graf, Feb 2002; Worldwide, pb, July 2003.
      Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool. Carroll & Graf, Dec 2002; Worldwide, pb, June 2004.
      Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. Carroll & Graf, Feb 2004; Worldwide, 2005.
      Fools Rush In. Pegasus, Mar 2007; trade paperback, Mar 2009.