The Skelly Man
An Alex Rasmussen Mystery
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Amiable, wisecracking Alex Rasmussen was first introduced--to great acclaim--in The Heaven Stone, which won the PWA/St. Martin's Best First Private Eye Novel Contest, and was also named one of the best mysteries of the year by the Providence Journal-Bulletin. Now ghosts from the past and a murderous Halloween haunt his second case.
A former cop gone private, Rasmussen makes a living in the decaying New England mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell is also the hometown of Good Night Show host Jerry Corbin, whose career has started to slump in recent years. Corbin and his entourage have come to town to film the pilot episode for a new series designed to boost his sagging star quotient and rescue his ratings. Unfortunately, someone's been sending Corbin hate mail, and an off-the-record investigation is in order.
Enter Rasmussen, whose familiarity with TV consists of whatever's on the set in his local bar between sporting events. He's game for the job, though, and soon finds himself one of the insiders in Corbin's camp. Digging into Corbin's life to find out who wants to destroy him, Rasmussen learns that there are old secrets someone wants kept and old grudges someone wants satisfied. Corbin may have been on the fringes of these events, but now he has become the prime target.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following up his debut in The Heaven Stone, Daniel's shamus Alex Rasmussen treads familiar detective-fiction waters for quite a while before events take a decidedly weird turn and the PI swims neatly toward the conclusion. Ex-cop Rasmussen is based in industrial Lowell, Mass., a town nearly as down-and-out as he is. Divorced, lonely, fond of drink, Alex seems a chronic loser. But he's also dogged and capable of abstract thought, characteristics that serve him well when he's hired by the advance man for late-night TV talk-show host Jerry Corbin. Corbin, a local boy returning to Lowell to tape a show, has been receiving threatening mail. Although he has a bunch of ex-wives and a disparate crew of subordinates, his college days provide a choicer pool of suspects, as Rasmussen unearths a secret society with a grudge and an academic with a wandering wife. A low body count and low-level suspense hamper this work until near the end, when two fast deaths occur and Alex gets a couple of sound beatings, emerging much the wiser on both occasions.
