The Middle of Nowhere: A Lenny Bliss Mystery - Softcover

Sloan, Bob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802141412 ISBN 13: 9780802141415

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004

Synopsis

In its starred review, Publishers Weekly called Bliss Jumps the Gun "the book for the mystery reader who's looking for something fresh and strong." Now in The Middle of Nowhere, Bob Sloan has once again created an intricate plot and characters that will keep you on the edge on your seat.

Homicide detective Lenny Bliss wears consciousness like an albatross. He is looking for some inner peace. Instead he gets a floater fished out of the East River. Then his comedienne turned novelist wife wants to tag along. She's writing a novel about, of all things, a homicide detective. The investigation is not going swimmingly (they never do, with floaters) when another case takes precedent--the bludgeoning of a young man during a party in a swanky Upper East Side townhouse. Arriving on the scene, Bliss realizes he's been to this townhouse before, the night he went looking for his missing daughter who had also been to the swanky townhouse party. If his previous visit is revealed, it will taint the case and make Bliss a very likely suspect.

In The Middle of Nowhere, Bob Sloan writes with the lyrical toughness of James Lee Burke and the dark humor of Carl Hiassen, creating a torrid and revealing look at the dark underbelly of New York's wealthy elite-and the deeper darkness that lies under that.

About this title

From Booklist

The third mystery featuring New York homicide detective Lenny Bliss delivers humor, soul, and dark drama in equal measure. Bliss is dealing with an old corpse fished out of the East River and with his wife's sudden interest in writing a crime novel, when a teenage boy is found murdered after a party in a posh townhouse on the Upper East Side. The scant evidence seems to point to an evasive crew of teenagers and to the man who went to the townhouse looking for his daughter in the middle of the night--Bliss himself, who must figure out whom he can trust with his secret before the missing videotape from the home's security camera surfaces. Some interesting takes on the perils of fatherhood appear amidst the investigative work here, and the descriptions of Bliss muttering his way through a yoga class and reading excerpts from his wife's novel-in-progress will have readers smirking right along with him. Carrie Bissey
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Publishers Weekly

In Bob Sloan's interesting but ultimately unsatisfying third series entry, The Middle of Nowhere: A Lenny Bliss Mystery (after 1999's Bliss Jumps the Gun), the veteran NYPD homicide detective finds juggling his job and family life increasingly challenging after two bodies surface: one in the East River, which may be linked with a slumlord's gentrification schemes, the other in an affluent and influential family's Upper East Side apartment. Sloan succeeds at crafting finely etched portraits of the many people whose lives are touched by the crimes, but the various affecting vignettes don't make for a coherent whole, leaving the reader with a taste of a promising talent not fully realized.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0802141412
• ISBN 13: 9780802141415
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304