Clutching at Straws - Hardcover

J. L. Abramo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786258241 ISBN 13: 9780786258246

Publisher: Thorndike Press, 2003

Synopsis

Lefty Wright breaks into Judge Chancellor's empty house easy as pie. He has no clue about why he is being paid such a handsome sum for doing it. But the job description hadn't mentioned the corpse of a prominent criminal court judge lying halfway under the bed. When he is charged with murder, Lefty's SOS zooms over the phone wires and reaches one Jake Diamond, Private Investigator.

Available only in Americana 5.

About this title

About the Author:

Joseph Abramo is a longtime educator, theater producer and director, a stage and screen actor and an arts journalist. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Abramo now lives in Columbia, South Carolina. His first novel, Catching Water in a Net, was w inner of the 2000 St. Martin’s Press PWA Award for the year's best first Private Eye novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

A worthy successor to Catching Water in a Net (2000), Abramo's second in the San Francisco-based Jake Diamond PI series is a clever and well-crafted detective novel, gritty enough to satisfy hard-boiled readers but not so dark that it will put off more traditional mystery fans. Hired to break into a local judge's house and extract money and papers from a wall safe, Lefty Wright, a small-time thief, stumbles over the judge's corpse and is immediately surrounded by policemen. Wright later calls Diamond from prison, where he awaits trial for murder, and convinces the PI of his innocence. As Diamond proceeds with his investigation, the police, the governor and especially prosecuting attorney and DA candidate Lowell Ryder all make it very clear that they don't want him involved. When Wright is killed "trying to escape" en route to court, things get really interesting. Scrambling to make a case, Diamond trails crooked cops and even resurrects his dormant acting career to appear in a bit part in a movie to get close to a key suspect. Throughout the book, Diamond is reading Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, which parallels his current case.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0786258241
• ISBN 13: 9780786258246
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400