Nightbird - Softcover

Dee, Edward

3.53

51 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446609137 ISBN 13: 9780446609135

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2000

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At one A.M. the beautiful young woman in white plummeted through the Times Square sky and slammed onto the roof of a parked van. NYPD Detective Anthony Ryan, who had witnessed the fatal descent, swore that as he bent over her broken body, the "jumper" whispered three words in his ear.... Thus begins a case that will haunt Ryan and his partner, Detective Joe Gregory, more than any other in their twenty years on the job. Did promising actress Gillian Stone commit suicide or was she pushed off her high-rise balcony? To uncover the truth, Ryan and Gregory must delve into worlds both known and unfamiliar, from Broadway's back alleys to the old Irish enclaves of Yonkers, and probe the dark secrets of a mysterious woman's heart.

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About the Author:

Born in Yonkers, NY on Feb. 3, 1940, Ed Dee grew up in the city's west side projects. After graduating from Sacred Heart H. S. he spent two years in the U.S. Army. In 1962, after several Teamster Union trucking jobs, he joined the NYPD. He spent nine years in uniform walking the streets of the South Bronx, while earning a BA at Fordham University. During the last eleven years he supervised detectives in the Organized Crime Control Bureau. Ed retired from the NYPD as a lieutenant lugging a suitcase full of stories he had to write. He left Fordham Law School to obtain a MFA in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. His master's thesis became his first novel. Although the horror and hilarity of his NYPD career are evident in his work, Ed focuses on the cops themselves; how the depressing grind of an impossible job infects and changes them, then spills over onto those they love. Ed has two daughters and four grandchildren. He lives in Delaware with his wife, Nancy who made the frying pan-to-fire leap of cop's wife to writer's wife.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The fourth case for NYPD detectives Joe Gregory and Anthony Ryan begins just like Lethal Weapon, with an actress taking a header from a high window, but all similarities to the live-action cartoon series end there. Ryan, still recovering from his son Rip's death, could have sworn he heard Gillian Stone whisper ``I love you'' with her dying breath as her broken body lay on the roof of the Times Square Ark of Salvation van that ended her plunge from her Broadway Arms terrace. Did she fall, or was she pushed? Despite the absence of suspicious circumstances, the air is thick with accusations. Ryan's nephew Danny Eumont, a reporter whose last byline for Manhattan magazine was an expos of police violenceand who, as it turns out, was an ex-lover of Gillian's who last saw her only a few hours before she diedblames her death on Broadway producer Trey Winters, who insisted she take a career-ending drug test before opening in the chorus of West Side Story. Winters insists that there was ample reason for the test, because Gillian was doing serious drugs. Gillian's neighbor Stella Grasso tells Gregory and Ryan that Winters had been a constant all-hours visitor to the apartment he set Gillian up in. And Evan Stone, Gillian's father in Arizona, completes the circle by decking Danny when he shows up for his daughters funeral. What none of them knows about is the blackmail demand a Mexican juggler named Victor Nuez is about to spring on Winters, and the explosive impact the payoffmodeled on the climactic scene from Victor's favorite movie, The French Connectionwill have on the case. The plotting is hit-or-miss, with too many leads that go nowhere or get tied off with indecent ease. What lingers, though, is Dees craft in shaping each episodea series of interrogations becomes almost like a cycle of short storiesand the affection with which he treats his heroes' private lives without ever bashing the system they're fighting for. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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