Raise the Devil
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A starlet is dead, and it falls to Scott Elliott to avenge her
In the penthouse of a Las Vegas casino, a gang of mobsters play poker, betting sums that would make even the most seasoned gamblers blush. In the bedroom lies Beverly Brooks, one of Tinseltown’s most beautiful leading ladies. She has been kidnapped for the amusement of the don. Scott Elliott, Hollywood sleuth, has come to save her. Dressed as a bellhop, he slips her out through the service elevator and they make their getaway down the Vegas strip. He has saved her life—for now.
While shooting a cut-rate rip-off of Cleopatra, Brooks and her producer are killed in a plane crash that may lead back to the Mob. Elliott was supposed to be protecting her, and he let her down. To ease his conscience, Los Angeles’ toughest private detective will have to give in to his hunger for revenge.
“Faherty’s deft plotting makes good on every little clue he plants.” —The Indianapolis Star
“I was hooked on the ambience of old Hollywood. . . . Elliott makes a tough and principled protagonist in this unique and satisfying series.” —The Plain Dealer on Come Back Dead
“A writer so talented that his good guys are as interesting as his bad ones.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
Terence Faherty (b. 1954) is an American author of mystery novels. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, he studied at Boston College and Rider College (now Rider University) before moving to Indianapolis, where he took a job as a technical writer. He also began attending writing workshops organized by the Indiana Writers Center, an experience that led him to write novels, beginning with Deadstick (1991). Nominated for an Edgar Award for best first novel, Deadstick introduced Owen Keane, an ex-seminarian who uses his metaphysical background to solve mysteries.
Faherty has written seven other novels starring Keane, including Live to Regret (1992) and Eastward in Eden (2013). In 1996 he began writing about the old-fashioned private detective Scott Elliott, a hard-boiled gumshoe whose adventures, chronicled in books like Come Back Dead (1997) and Raise the Devil (2000), are infused with the flavor of old Hollywood. Faherty’s most recent novel is The Quiet Woman (2014).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scott Elliott, an actor turned private detective, and Ella, his screenwriter wife, are on location for the shooting of Warrior Queen, a historical epic, when starlet Bebe Brooks and Marcus Pioline, the film's director, both perish in a plane crash. Scott feels somewhat guilty since he just returned poor Bebe to the set, rescuing her from the clutches of Johnny Remlinger, a mob hoodlum. This is Faherty's third Elliott tale (after Kill Me Again and Come Back Dead), which like the others is set in the '60s and suitably drenched in movie lore. Unfortunately, in this instance the plot drags, weighed down by the imbalance between an agreeably large cast of characters and shamefully few murder motives. Pioline's former wife, once a leading lady, is relegated to a lesser role in Warrior Queen. His nervous daughter also has a bit part. Bebe's husband, a hard-boozing writer, also has cause for resentment. Johnny isn't exactly saintly, but he claims that Bebe needed him to get her off drugs. There are rumors of affairs and two more deaths occur. The eventual solution relies on an overly used crime novel gambit, and is especially unsatisfying given the uniform excellence of Faherty's other series, which features Oscar Keane and began with the Edgar-nominated Deadstick. For a mystery writer to have more than one series up and running is far from unusual. What is surprising is the wide disparity in quality between Faherty's two.
