PLACID'S VIEWA Mike Diamond Mystery by Murray Heller
From Chapter One:
"I turned to Jake. `I don't know what it is, but I always block out. I can never remember the names of the mountains.'
`That's because you're a city kid. All you can recognize are garbage cans. Now concentrate,' Jake pointed toward the High Peaks. `The end one over there to the left, the one with that big rock face there, see it? That's the Gothics. Go to the right,' Jake moved his arm, `That's Saddleback, and close by it you can see a small tip of Basin. Then Marcy, there,' Jake pointed. `You got Marcy?'
`I think so.' I was sighting along Jake's outstretched arm. His rifle arm, I thought. Don't ask why.
`Then keep moving to the right and there's Colden and,' Jake nudged me a few feet toward the entrance so I could see the remainder of the peaks hidden behind the Arena sign, `there's Algonquin, Boundary and then Iroquois Mountain.'
`I'll never remember, Jake. All the time I've been living in the Adirondacks I've never been in the mountains. Don't think I ever will. It's over my head.' I grinned and pulled the glass door open.
We walked past the Chamber of Commerce office and climbed the stairs to the ice rink, to the old one on the right, the 1932 Olympic rink. . ."
"Move over, Elmore Leonard. There's a new mystery writer on the scene with a gift for putting dialogue on the page the way real people speak it. Heller's prose goes down like a single-malt Scotch, all smoothness and sophistication, and yet it burns in the gut and creates a sense of danger looming in the next shot glass. You finish the book thirsty for more shots from Murray Heller's bottle of potent storytelling." --Paul Grondahl, feature writer for the Albany Times Union
College teacher Mike Diamond lives a quiet life until Christina, the girlfriend of one of his students, is gruesomely murdered at the Olympic Arena. Mike's involvement leads to a daring and explosive denouement.
Murray Heller lives in the Catskills when he's not sailing the Atlantic Ocean.
Copyright © 1998 Purple Mountain Press. All rights reserved.