Dead of Summer - Hardcover

Miano, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1575664046 ISBN 13: 9781575664040

Publisher: Kensington Pub Corp, 1999

Synopsis

On vacation in Connecticut, tough TV news producer Michael Carpo investigates the supposed suicide of his old friend, Jack Crawford, and discovers that seven other local residents have also died tragically in the last three years, a deadly trail that leads Carpo into a labyrinthine web of evil and conspiracy.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Not just summer, either; there are enough corpses to carpet all four seasons in this high-casualty but curiously unengaging, whodunit. Everything starts when Channel 8 newswriter Michael Carpo (The Street Where She Lived, 1998, etc.), arriving in Bridgewater, Conn., for his annual week of housesitting for black journalist Jack Crawford, finds Jack gruesomely dead on his bathroom floor, his black Lab standing terrified vigil over the body. State Trooper Walker pronounces the death a suicide, but Jack's ex-neighbor Elizabeth Jessup insists that Jack's death has left ``a ripple'' that means he's died before his time, and with outside help. Crazy talk, thinks Carpountil Bethie Jessup is drowned herself, propelling Carpo to the New Milford library to research other suspicious deaths in a heroic leap of logic typical of Carpo's maddeningly intuitive methods. Still, over the past two years, it turns out, somebody's declared open season on the senior citizens of the forgotten hamlet of Southville; no fewer than six graves mark his (or her) earlier successes. Naturally, Trooper Walker shakes off the evidence of wholesale slaughter, leaving Carpo free to pursue the case on his own, with time-outs for a decorous whirlwind romance with neighboring painter Amanda Cutler, who's got an unguessable surprise up her own sleeve. Despite gallons of gore, it's hard to care about homicide when the victims are little more than names and the hero's kind of a blank slate too. The culprit could be the lowest-impact serial killer in the business. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

New York resident, coffee fanatic and television writer Michael Carpo escapes to the small town of Bridgewater, Conn., once a year for a week at the house of a friend, elderly African-American writer Jack Crawford. This year, Carpo's vacation plan takes a detour when he finds Jack dead. In this third Carpo caper (after The Street Where She Lived), Miano agreeably picks up the pace from the earlier, somewhat lackadaisical, entries. Jack's demise looks a lot like suicide, but a trip to the local library reveals that the older residents of the sleepy burg are dying at a suspiciously fast clip. The deceased, it turns out, are all linked to a ghost town submerged by a recently constructed lake. Carpo must find out who wanted them dead, and why, before the last of the lost town's survivors disappear. He is distracted from his detecting, however, by Amanda Cutler, a local painter whose artwork comes eerily close to duplicating his own bad dreams. An evocative subtext exploring the emotional fallout from deaths that haunt the living will help keep readers turning pages in this tightly woven mystery, the best yet of the series.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kensington Pub Corp
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1575664046
• ISBN 13: 9781575664040
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224