Dead Letter, Jonathan Valin
Dead Letter, Jonathan Valin
List: $21.95 | Sale: $15.37
Club: $10.97

Dead Letter

Author: Jonathan Valin

Narrator: Mark Peckham

Unabridged: 7 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2012

Synopsis

The professor was an eccentric old bird, and his daughter was a delicate flower. So how could Harry Stoner suspect the snake pit of hatred and greed he was walking into that winter day when he agreed to find a missing document for Professor Daryl Lovingwell?Following Sarah Lovingwell to a subversive group landed Stoner face-to-face with a towering ex-marine making a new career of murder. Before Stoner could catch his balance, one of the two Lovingwells was dead, and snow-steeped Cincinnati was cut through the center by a highway of blood and violence. Harry Stoner was in the middle of it—holding the pieces of an explosive puzzle of lies.Blackmail, adultery, and evil—an evil you’d never associate with a sensitive little man in tweed, until you saw good people die before your eyes.

About Jonathan Valin

Jonathan Valin is a mystery author best known for the Harry Stoner detective series. He won the Shamus Award for best mystery novel of 1989. After writing eleven Harry Stoner novels over a fourteen-year period, he took a break from mystery writing to help found Fi, a magazine of music criticism. He now works as an editor and reviewer for magazines.

About Mark Peckham

Mark Peckham is an actor and director based in Rhode Island. In addition to working with Trinity Rep, Virginia Stage Co., and many Boston-area theaters, he was the voice of Joseph Smith in the award-winning PBS documentary American Prophet with Gregory Peck.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on April 10, 2019

It is always a bit of a risk revisiting a series of books you once loved, and forty years ago I loved Jonathan Valin’s series of Harry Stoner mysteries. P.I. Stoner was tough, but sensitve too . . . and so was his creator’s prose. Valin had a poet’s eye, a musicians ear, and yet he possessed the dar......more

Goodreads review by Cathy on June 26, 2013

It's a Jonathan Valin again, my new favorite writer with my new favorite character, Harry Stoner, P. I. This is #3 in the series and although I do like to read in order, I'm not fanatical about it. This book was on the library shelf so I walked right out of the library, took it home and cracked it o......more

Goodreads review by Lee on September 07, 2018

The third in the Harry Stoner series, and a good early '80's PI series. Harry, a soft-hearted (but, also hard headed) ex Vietnam vet, former cop in Cincinnati. Valin has a good feeling for pace, and a good storyteller.......more

Goodreads review by Machka on August 16, 2024

The main plot was intriguing, but the I could have done without the whole section in the middle that didn't seem connected to the main plot.......more

Goodreads review by John on June 28, 2015

Library Audio Professor Daryl Lovingwell was an eccentric old bird, who commits initially what looks like a suicide. But it is a murder. The secret intelligent papers kept at the professors home then stolen appears made up as no one knows about them but finally they are letters from another professor......more

Quotes

“Rough, vivid, and impressive.” San Francisco Chronicle, praise for the series

“Jonathan Valin’s The Lime Pit…is powerful and brilliantly filled with difficult-to-forget characters, including the protagonist, private eye Harry Stoner…Valin wrote fewer that a half dozen Stoner novels set in and around Cincinnati. All are gems. They never caught on, never got an audience, while far lesser talents became best sellers. It would be great if some enterprising publisher picked up the Stoner novels. I would read them all again and recommend them to all lovers of hard-boiled mysteries.” Stuart M. Kaminsky on The Lime Pit

“Stoner calls Cincinnati home, which probably explains the death wish that got him into the gumshoe racket. Three books by writer Jonathan Valin—The Lime Pit, Final Notice, and Dead Letter—feature Stoner, a soft touch and a bad judge of character, risking life and limb to smash a kiddie prostitution ring, hunt down a library vandal-psycho killer, and figure out who bumped off a college prof trading in government secrets.” Steven X. Rea, praise for the series

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