MIKE JAHN – The Quark Maneuver. Ballantine; paperback original; 1st printing, March 1977.

   Add yet another liberated lady to the growing list of female action sleuths we have seen recently. Her knowledge of karate helps save the lives of a pair of cops at the mercy of two blacks with automatic rifles underneath the Queensboro bridge and involves her in their subsequent pursuit of a Quark-carrying madman capable of bringing on World War III.

   What’s a Quark? Only a portable surface-to-air missile powerful enough to bring down the plane carrying Hua Kuo-feng, the premier of China, into New York City for a UN summit conference.

   Her name is Diana Cantardo, and she runs a pretty fair restaurant on 59th Street, but she soon finds that romance and adventure are much more fun. I concur whole-heartedly and hope that that won’t be the last we see of the delightful Miss Cantardo, truly a beauty with brains, as she tackles more cases with her new friend Lieutenant DiGioa, who is not as old as he first appears.

   I do have one gripe, though, about an ending that’s both too loose and yet too tightly plotted. See if you don’t agree.

Rating:   B.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 1, No. 5, September 1977 (very slightly revised).


[UPDATE] 04-15-11.   The Quark Maneuver was Michael Jahn’s first mystery novel, and it won an Edgar for Best Paperback Original in 1978. Nonetheless, this was Diana Cantardo’s first and only appearance in book form. I kept looking for a followup at the time, to no avail.

   In 1982 with Night Rituals, Jahn began a series of novels featuring Bill Donovan, head of Manhattan’s West Side Major Crimes Unit. Over the years Donovan has been promoted to Chief of Special Investigations for the NYPD, with ten in the series so far and the 11th due next year.