Deadman (Detective Sergeant Mulheisen Series #5)

by Jon A. Jackson

Overview

Deadman is another virtuoso performance from a master crime novelist. This time, Mulheisen is headed out of town, hot on the trail of Helen Sedlacek, who skipped out with a truckload of stolen cash after chopping down mob boss Carmine Busoni with a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun. A man fitting the description of Joe Service — Helen's amour and Mulheisen's nemesis — has turned up in a Butte hospital in a coma, having been shot in the face at close range. Mario Soper, a Mafia assassin with a contract on Joe, has turned up dead in a Montana irrigation ditch. But where is Helen — and the money? Who killed Mario — and who shot Joe? Deadman is a gritty, pulse-pounding wild-goose chase that confirms once again Jackson's place at the top tier of American mystery writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802137715
Publisher:	Grove Atlantic
Publication date:	12/13/2000
Series:	Detective Sergeant Mulheisen Series , #5
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.42(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.73(d)

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

In his last appearance, in Hit on the House , Detroit cop Fang Mulheisen chased the killer of a mob hoodlum. He lost the chase and the trail went cold. Oh well. Jackson, who delights in sending his readers down these supposed cul-de-sacs, employs circuitous characterization and irony as a counterbalance to conventional crime fiction notions of right and wrong. Here, as corpses accumulating in Butte, Mont., suggest the involvement of Motor City mobsters, Fang takes a busman's holiday and finds himself in a strange land where the natives smile on the streets, crystal whitewater rapids beckon and women strip at the sight of a hot spring. A Detroit mob enforcer named Joe is found nearly dead on the side of a Montana road. His girlfriend Helen, the daughter of a dead mobster and Fang's best suspect in the unsolved hit featured in the last book, has vanished with lots of cash. Hit killer Heather, hired by the mob to finish off Joe, is sidetracked by her love for the pretty nurse who's taking care of Joe, preaching the gospel of Jesus and fondling her patient's privates during sponge baths. This being the West, there must be a showdown--this time involving mobsters, cops and locals. Jackson's characters are a generous, joyous gift: Fang as fish out of water, Helen as moll on the run and Heather as a homophobe's nightmare. Jackson lost 10 writing years between his debut The Blind Pig , and Grootka , his truly masterful followup. He's back on track now with this, his second winner in as many years. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

An improbably rambunctious sequel to the death-soaked Hit on the House (1993) that finds mob daughter Helen Sedlacek and her lover Joe Service celebrating their execution of Detroit gang leader Carmine Busoni (revenge for Helen's slain father, Big Sid) in Butte, Montana, which isn't quite far enough to discourage contract killers Mario Soper—handily dispatched by Helen after he shoots Joe and leaves him for dead—or Heather, who combines business with pleasure by finagling her way into the home of Joe's nurse, Cate Yoder, whom she's smitten with. Also on hand, after a few phone calls, are Detroit's finest, Sgt. Fang Mulheisen—whom his old pal, Silver County prosecutor Gianni Antoni, is trying to lure into a job with the Northern Rim Task Force to investigate rumors of an Asian crime invasion—and Detroit's scummiest, Carmine's successor Humphrey DiEbola, and Victor Echeverria, a Colombian businessman searching for the $5 million he gave to Carmine to launder. Wonder whether Helen knows where the money is? Mulheisen and his creator are obviously having the time of their lives in this knockabout farce, and so will readers who can appreciate the ways Jackson's comedy is deepened by his characters' brutality.

Kirkus Reviews