High Walk: A Stuart Mallory Mystery

Very good in very good dust jacket.(remainder line, price-clipped.) Hardcover first edition - Brownsville, OR:: Story Line Press,, 1996.. Hardcover first edition -. Very good in very good dust jacket.(remainder line, price-clipped.). First printing. The third Stuart Mallory mystery, set in the woodlands of Wisconsin and the Upper Michigan peninsula. 246 pp

Blunders both large and small conspire to sink this mystery set in northern Michigan. Lansing sleuth Stuart Mallory (A Still and Icy Silence) hated Scott Quinn during their tour of duty in Vietnam. So he's surprised when, more than 20 years later, Quinn's father hires him to track down his missing son. But Mallory's not too surprised to learn that he's not the only one searching for Scott. Now a minister and a therapist, Scott used to work in military intelligence-which is a little hard to believe since Mallory has a ridiculously easy time of tracking him down. Scott may or may not be guilty of a crime. But he tells Mallory that, in his capacity as a minister, he has betrayed a confidence and that now the person whose trust he violated is after him. Is Scott lying or telling the truth? That's the question into which Roat fails to inject enough suspense. Despite some evocative renderings of the Michigan landscape, especially when the book crosses to the Upper Peninsula, this tale limps along, as slow and obvious as the cliched discussions Scott and Mallory have about God.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The initial scene of this title establishes the Michigan setting as a frame of reference. Private eye Stuart Mallory's Vietnam experience also links him to the missing minister he seeks. Mallory succeeds in locating the minister, but first encounters a murder victim who had the minister's card placed near his phone. Meanwhile, the minister fears the revenge of an ex-con. Roat (A Still and Icy Silence, Story Line Pr., 1993) spreads his narrative amidst the splendors of Michigan, using calming, cadenced prose and smooth plotting. Recommended.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lansing, Michigan, private eye Stuart Mallory has been hired to find Scott Quinn, his army commander from Vietnam. Mallory hated Quinn then, believing him a coward, but he reluctantly agrees to put aside his personal feelings to help Quinn's desperate father and wife. After leaving the army, Quinn was ordained a Methodist minister, lost his pastorate, then became a drug and alcohol abuse counselor in a tony rehab clinic. Mallory solves Quinn's disappearance fairly easily, then takes it upon himself to discover why Quinn ran. Unfortunately, this part of the investigation has lethal results. In his third Stuart Mallory mystery, Roat has added new depth and dimension to his character, especially in terms of Mallory's romance with burned-out attorney Patty Bonicelli. Roat is an excellent storyteller, punctuating his lean prose with the judicious use of startling but entirely apt metaphors. The relationship Roat creates between Mallory and Quinn hearkens back to Philip Marlowe and Terry Malloy in Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye; surprisingly, Roat does not suffer in this comparison. George Needham