Left for Dead: A Mark Renzler Novel - Hardcover

Engleman, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312135343 ISBN 13: 9780312135348

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1996

Synopsis

It is December 1972. J. Edgar Hoover is dead, Richard Nixon has been newly reelected, and Private Investigator Mark Renzler is just settling in for another miserable Christmas season in New York City.
But even this dismal prospect fades when he is contacted by a friend of a friend in need of his help. Harmony Rollins, a blaxploitation film actress and star of the recently released Sister Shamus, is worried about her brother Harpo. An ex-Black Panther, Harpo was involved in the break-in of an FBI office and may be holding documents that the FBI doesn't want released to the public. Since the collapse of the Panthers, Harpo has been deep underground and was not in contact with his family until he called Harmony ten days ago, scared for his life and frantic that his cover had been blown. When Harpo doesn't pick up the getaway money she wired, Harmony turns to Renzler. Now Renzler must navigate through the wilderness of the fractured and paranoid radical left to find his man - or it will be a very un-Merry Christmas for all.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Engleman is the author of eight novels, including Dead in Center Field, winner of the Private Eye Writers of America SHAMUS award and Japan's FALCON award. His other books featuring New York detective Mark Renzler include Catch A Fallen Angel, Murder-in-Law, Left for Dead, and Who Shot Longshot Sam? A second series, with Second City sleuth Phil Moony, includes The Man With My Name and The Man With My Cat. A two-time winner of the Peter Lisagor award given by the Society of Professional Journalists, Engleman's articles, essays and interviews have appeared in numerous publications, including AARP, Playboy, Chicago magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Crain's Chicago Business, the Chicago Reader, the Huffington Post, and The Rotarian. His weekly column Diary of a Dad Housewife ran in the Chicago Sun-Times. Originally from Wayne, New Jersey, Engleman attended Beloit College in Wisconsin. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two sons.

Reviews

Set amid the paranoia of the early 1970s, this is the first appearance of New Jersey-based shamus Mark Renzler since Who Shot Longshot Sam? in 1989. Harmony Rollins, whom Renzler once watched making love on his kitchen table (with his partner) has become a big star in the bevy of blaxploitation films that followed in the wake of Shaft. She asks Renzler to find her black activist brother Harpo, who belongs to the People's Revolutionary Front. The PRF has a charismatic leader, several well-heeled white sympathizers in its ranks, two psychotic feds on its trail and an unknown informer in the ranks, who might be Harpo. The Front is closely linked to a shoot-out in Chicago, and Renzler is soon logging a lot of miles between Jersey and the Windy City, with the alluring Harmony in tow. Engleman scores with pitch-perfect pacing and some wry takes on race relations in the bellbottomed '70s, when the intricacies of political correctness weren't in place. The quixotic loyalties of his characters are less clearly drawn, and it requires careful reading to discern the levels of duplicity. Still, it's nice to see Renzler back in action after a long vacation, and in a plot that moves along smartly.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312135343
• ISBN 13: 9780312135348
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232