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Do you have a favorite restaurant or bar? A place you frequent regularly, where, over the passage of time, you see the same patrons? Is it a place where you may have even come to expect certain people to be there whenever you drop in, often seated in the same place? Do you ever wonder about the lives of some of those people, outside this one particular place where your life and that other person's intersect, however casually? CPA Jim Messenger does. In San Francisco he eats supper nearly every night at the Harmony Cafe. So does a woman called Janet Mitchell. Messenger is lonely, fed up with his job, and he wonders about Janet Mitchell, even after she rebuffs his single, tentative, approach. Then, one day, Janet Mitchell is gone. She has committed suicide. Even though they have hardly spoken to one another, Messenger finds himself compelled to learn more about Janet Mitchell. His quest takes him to an isolated community in Nevada, where he encounters a small community of individuals who are living out their lives with the desperate knowledge that murder and other horrible secrets lie ill-concealed in the dusty corners and trackless desert. Messenger's arrival and persistent efforts to learn the true story of the woman who called herself Janet Mitchell, gradually peel away concealing layers and as the tension steadily rises, Messenger finds himself at the center of a storm that will change the community, and perhaps his own life, forever. "Blue Lonesome" is a strong, moody, study of lonely, fractured people,and the ways in which, consciously and unconsciously, we all build walls around ourselves, too often denying the painful realities of life. Mr. Pronzini has more to say on these subjects in later crime novels, "A Wasteland of Strangers," and "Nothing But The Night." "Blue Lonesome" is a thoughtful, powerful character study wrapped inside a thriller that will hold readers' attention. Artist Doug Henry has contributed an outstanding, evocative cover illustration.
Reviewed by Carl Brookins, May 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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