Vanishing Smile - Hardcover

Emerson, Earl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345384865 ISBN 13: 9780345384867

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1995

Synopsis

Earl Emerson, author of The Portland Laugher and other novels featuring Seattle private eye Thomas Black, has been hailed by Aaron Elkins as "a writer's writer--a master of witty dialogue; clever, complex plotting; and lucid, meaty prose in the best tradition of American crime fiction." Now, in The Vanishing Smile, a fateful, fatal encounter on a rain-swept highway throws Black into a deadly investigation.
Marian Wright is an amateur sleuth in the employ of two attractive young women eager to catch up with their no-account ex-lovers. Spry and seventyish, Marian has all the resourcefulness of a professional gumshoe, and the relentlessness of a woman with a score of her own to settle. When Marian's investigation ends abruptly and ferociously--with Thomas Black and his estranged friend Kathy Birchfield as eyewitnesses--Thomas has a new case on his hands.
Picking up the pieces of Marian Wright's search for her clients' rogue boyfriends, Thomas encounters a network of people--from ex-cons to prostitutes to other private investigators--all webbed together by a chilling common thread. It's a discovery that speaks volumes about the zealousness of Marian's manhunt, and even suggests a monstrous reason for her sudden death.
Equally monstrous is an unknown, baseball-wielding assailant who seems hell-bent to ensure that the investigation stays closed. But Black doesn't need a head-bashing to grasp the violent, virulent implications behind Marian Wright's death. And readers don't need to look further than The Vanishing Smile for the red-hot action and white-knuckle suspense that have become Earl Emerson's trademarks.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

, author of The Portland Laugher and other novels featuring Seattle private eye Thomas Black, has been hailed by Aaron Elkins as "a writer's writer--a master of witty dialogue; clever, complex plotting; and lucid, meaty prose in the best tradition of American crime fiction." Now, in The Vanishing Smile, a fateful, fatal encounter on a rain-swept highway throws Black into a deadly investigation.<br>Marian Wright is an amateur sleuth in the employ of two attractive young women eager to catch up with their no-account ex-lovers. Spry and seventyish, Marian has all the resourcefulness of a professional gumshoe, and the relentlessness of a woman with a score of her own to settle. When Marian's investigation ends abruptly and ferociously--with Thomas Black and his estranged friend Kathy Birchfield as eyewitnesses--Thomas has a new case on his hands.<br>Picking up the pieces of Marian Wright's search for her clients' rogue boyfriends, Thomas encounters a network of people--from ex-cons to pros

Reviews

In his eighth adventure (following The Portland Laugher), Seattle PI Thomas Black accompanies lawyer Kathy Birchfield to a mysterious meeting with a client in the mountains on a rainy night. Birchfield's car strikes a pedestrian who seems to materialize out of nowhere. The victim is identified as Birchfield's client, a 71-year-old amateur gumshoe named Marian Wright. Too much about the "accident" looks suspicious to Black, especially when he learns that Wright was hounding several locals with allegations about their sexual histories. The case leads to a web of past lovers who may or may not be linked to a young woman dying of AIDS. Black's investigation is complicated by his love for Kathy, whose fiance he accidentally shot to death several months earlier, and by the return to town of his own wayward father. These relationships show a vulnerable side of the tough, resourceful Black, but they also sometimes slow down the story. Although it takes a chart to keep the characters and their couplings straight, Shamus-winner Emerson wraps them up credibly and does so with gritty panache.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Emerson (The Portland Smile, LJ 6/94) adds another nerve racking case to private detective Thomas Black's file cabinet. After Black and estranged friend Kathy witness the "accidental" death of a 71-year-old amateur sleuth, Black decides to continue the woman's dangerous investigation into the whereabouts of two ne'er-do-well Romeos. Feckless prose, charm, and master wit.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Three women--one humiliated, one impregnated and abandoned, and the third infected with the AIDS virus--band together to plot comeuppances for the men who did them dirty, but their plans are aborted when the woman tracking down the source of her infection is killed on a rain-slicked highway in Washington State's Cascade Mountains. The other two hire Seattle detective Thomas Black to find out whether it was an accident, suicide, or murder, but someone wants the investigation stopped. Emerson's Thomas Black mysteries have won a devoted following with their intricate plots, snappy dialogue, and wonderfully specific locations, and few fans will be disappointed with the eighth installment in the series. Emerson again delivers the goods, dishing out humor, suspense, and heart-pounding action in heaping portions. Dennis Dodge

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345384865
• ISBN 13: 9780345384867
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 260