Deep Pockets - Hardcover

Barnes, Linda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312282710 ISBN 13: 9780312282714

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2004

Synopsis

Harvard professor Wilson Chaney's position in life is hanging by a thread; his marriage, his reputation, not to mention his tenure at Harvard are in the hands of a blackmailer, someone threatening to sell Chaney's secrets at very high prices. His enviable life could disappear into thin air should the blackmailer's evidence-proof of his affair with a young student-become public knowledge.

So he hires Boston private investigator Carlotta Carlyle to track down the blackmailer and put a stop to the scheme. Can she do it? Of course, but should she? The professor doesn't inspire much loyalty-after all, he did commit adultery with one of his own students-but Carlotta agrees. Digging into the case, nosing around Harvard and the possible suspects from the rest of Dr. Chaney's life, she uncovers a suspicious death as part of the backstory to Dr. Chaney's situation. Suddenly Carlotta's sixth sense is telling her the case might be more complicated-and more dangerous-than it first seemed.

Fresh from the success of The Big Dig, the masterful Linda Barnes delivers a bold and engaging novel infused with the deft touch and intricate suspense that have become her trademarks.

About this title

Review

Like Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Sara Paretsky, Linda Barnes deserves credit for usurping the male dominance over American private-eye fiction in the 1970s and '80s. Her six-foot-tall, redheaded Boston snoop and part-time cabbie, Carlotta Carlyle, started out (in 1987's A Trouble of Fools) as a savvy, self-reliant former cop whose potential to become Sam Spade in a skirt was mitigated by her emotional sensitivity and resistance to brash risk-taking. More than two decades later, Carlotta shows herself to be as compelling and credible as ever--if a bit wiser--in Deep Pockets.

"Look, I made a mistake. I slept with a student," concedes Wilson Chaney, an African-American professor at Harvard Medical School, as he hires Carlotta to find and foil the person responsible for blackmailing him with love letters he'd sent to Denali Brinkman, a startlingly attractive freshman rowing champ who evidently committed both suicide and arson at a Charles River boathouse. Carlotta thinks to curtail this squeeze by unearthing information damaging to the extortionist. But when the suspect turns out to be another of Denali's boyfriends, 30-year-old ex-con Benjy Dowling, and then Dowling perishes in a hit-and-run involving Chaney's van, the PI must reassess both her tactics and assumptions about this investigation. Is her client, already afraid of losing his job over an ill-advised intimacy, now being framed for murder, perhaps by another one of Dowling's blackmail targets? Could Chaney's troubles be traced to a rival or enemy at Harvard? Or to his wealthy, pregnancy-obsessed wife? Or maybe to his cutting-edge research into drug treatments for attention-deficit disorder? As Carlotta confronts the case's multiplying puzzles, she wonders whether there are answers to be found in Denali's sketchy past--answers that could not only clear Chaney, but protect this gutsy gumheel from an increasingly dangerous adversary.

Carlotta's distractions in Deep Pockets are numerous, from her ebbing relationship with a black FBI agent to her concern over the half-dressing habits of her fast-developing "little sister," Paolina. Yet she rarely misses a clue--except, of course, when it adds to the story's tensions. Barnes fails to fully explain a couple of dramatic plot turns in this 10th Carlotta Carlyle novel (after The Big Dig), and you needn't boast a Harvard sheepskin to figure out her tale's principal twist well in advance of its conclusion; however, those faults are outweighed by one's delight in seeing the pertinacious Ms Carlyle again get her man without entirely losing her femininity. --J. Kingston Pierce

From the Back Cover

From The Ivory Tower...
Harvard professor Wilson Chaney has a secret and somebody knows it. His adulterous affair with a freshman ended just weeks before she wound up dead. The sole trace of his infatuation is a stack of missing love letters-and they've fallen into the wrong hands...

To The Grave.
Carlotta Carlyle takes the case to find his blackmailer and retrieve the letters. Six-foot-one and red-haired, this private eye doesn't blink when the going gets tough. But can she trust her ultra-secretive client when a suspect turns up dead?

One False Move And This Prof's Headed For A Fall.
Now Carlotta must zero in on Boston's mean streets and talk her way into Harvard's inner sanctums, uncovering in the process just how intertwined the two are-and just how deadly the stakes can be...

"No question: Carlotta's tenth case is her best to date. Edgar nominators, take note."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Carlotta Carlyle combines the sensitivity of Robert Parker's Spenser with the stubbornness of Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, and she's rapidly carving out a place of her own." -Chicago Tribune

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0312282710
• ISBN 13: 9780312282714
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320