Catching Water in a Net (Jake Diamond Mystery) - Softcover

Abramo, J.L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937495485 ISBN 13: 9781937495480

Publisher: Down & Out Books, 2013

Synopsis

Winner of the 2000 St. Martin’s Press/PWA Award for Best First Private Eye Novel!

San Francisco PI Jake Diamond is a hero who plays both sides of the private eye street. He is a careless dresser with a sloppy lifestyle and he couldn’t keep his marriage from falling apart. But he also epitomizes the best of the modern shamus. He has the kinds of friends a man in his profession needs—jailbirds, mob bosses, and a cop who can surreptitiously run license plate numbers for him.

Jake has been down on his luck lately, barely making enough money to pay the bills but it looks like business might finally be picking up. A woman comes to his office begging him to find her missing husband who has been accused of murder. Jake remembers that his mentor Jimmy Pigeon always says “Whenever I’m asked to locate a missing spouse, the words ‘no, but thanks for asking’ always come to mind” and almost turns the case down, but then he learns that the murder victim was Jimmy Pigeon.

Determined to discover the identity of Pigeon’s killer, Diamond scrambles between Los Angeles and San Francisco following leads that range from weak to delusional. With the help of his trusty and sarcastic assistant, Darlene Roman, compulsive gambler Vinnie “String” Stradivarius, and Italian-American “businessman” Joey Russo, Jake slowly uncovers the motives behind Pigeon’s murder.

Jake’s adventure has all the components of a great new private eye series—scares, suspense, lots of laughs, a few tears and a big surprise at the end.

Praise for CATCHING WATER IN A NET:

“San Franciscan narrator Jake Diamond easily fits the traditional hard-boiled, whiskey-in-a-drawer, office-on-a-shoestring private eye mold. And the cryptic, hammered-out prose accentuates his dilemma: find the man who allegedly killed Jake’s former mentor in Los Angeles. Jake finds his man but too late. Now he extends his search to the guy who wanted to purchase the dead pair’s Ex-Con.com website business. The obligatory sultry ex-wife, characters with names like Willie Dogtail and Vinnie Stradivarius, and picturesque thugs complicate the plot and add to the atmosphere.” —Library Journal

“First novelist Abramo has the hard-boiled private eye formula down pat—perhaps even too pat. Diamond exhibits every PI cliche in the book, from the bottle in his desk drawer to his antagonistic relationship with the police. On the other hand, the novel is solidly written and captures the mood of the genre.” —Booklist

“Abramo’s novel brings back the spirit of Chandler and Spillane in a way that’s original while paying tribute to its genre predecessors.” —The State

“Abramo echoes themes from some of the great crime writers past and present, adding a great deal of his own.” —John Dantzler, co-author Hiking South Carolina

“Abramo keeps the twists coming fast enough that readers have no choice but to keep turning pages.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Fast-paced...ought to please pulp die-hards.” —Kirkus Reviews

About this title

From the Publisher:

Editorial Review from THE STATE, published on-line.

A TOUGH NEW PRIVATE EYE WALKS THE MEAN STREETS Reviewed by William W. Starr CATCHING WATER IN A NET

By J.L. Abramo

"The phone on my desk rang so unexpectedly I nearly spilled the Mylanta onto my only unstained necktie."

Whoa, there. That has to be Velda, the knockout gorgeous secretary calling her private-eye boss Mike Hammer in Mickey Spillane's "I, the Jury," right?

No, it's actually sassy Darlene who's called her boss, San Francisco P.I. Jake Diamond, in J.L. Abramo's first novel.

Now, I know Mike Hammer, and believe me, Jake Diamond is no Mike Hammer. No, Jake is a penniless, antacid-sniffing gumshoe who just happens to read Charles Dickens and loves his 1963 Chevy Impala. So no, he really isn't Mike Hammer.

But Columbia author Abramo's prize-winning novel brings back the spirit of Raymond Chandler, Spillane and countless other tough-guy P.I. authors in a way that's original while paying tribute to its genre predecessors.

You've got to love the names here, jailbirds, Mob bosses, hit men and the like. Sonny the Chin. Bobo Bigelow. Dogtail. Vinnie Stradivarius, called Vinnie Strings (though most of the tough guys in these pages don't have a clue why).

Diamond springs into action on the second page when a new client shows up, Evelyn Harding, who needs a P.I. to find her missing husband. Same scene you've read dozens of times before in these sorts of books. But here's the twist: She's not a sexy bombshell. But let Jake tell it in his own words:

"Her voice could have been broken glass. I felt a twinge in one of my molars. I slowly looked up from the folder, and the woman standing there could hardly be described in words. But I gave it a stab. She looked like a traced picture of herself.

"She was as plain as a cake doughnut."

But Evelyn Harding has some surprising news for Jake. Her missing husband is the prime suspect in the killing of Jake's best friend, a Los Angeles shamus named Jimmy Pigeon (didn't I tell you you'd love these names?), a murder that shakes Jake to his core and sends him winging off into the novel's twisting plot.

Armed with a copy of Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" (--) a most appropriate book, only the two cities in this context are San Fran and L.A., not London and Paris (--) Jake ravages the City of Angels in search of the gunman, or gunwoman, and turning up a few secrets along the way. And, as if to point up the differences between this P.I. and those in some other novels, Jake is not above dropping names like Godard, Copernicus and the Boxer Rebellion, Those words never dropped from Mike Hammer's lips.

Readers who grew up with the sex and violence of Spillane will find this fun, well-written new incarnation to be a little gentler. There are some pretty sexy dames here and there, but Jake isn't getting lucky with them.

Just know this isn't your grandmother's P.I. novel and enjoy. And hope that that Abramo (--) a Brooklyn native who now calls Columbia home (--) is at work on a sequel to "Catching Water in a Net," which won the St. Martin's Press/PWA Award for Best First Private Eye Novel.

From the Author:

Winner of the 2000 St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America Award BEST FIRST PRIVATE EYE NOVEL

About this edition

• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1937495485
• ISBN 13: 9781937495480
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 274