A requiem of sharks;: A novel of suspense

by Patrick Buchanan

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0396068413
• ISBN13: 9780396068419
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Dodd, Mead
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Naked Woman, Person-eating Sharks, A Lustful Ichthyologist

A Naked Woman, Person-eating Sharks, A Lustful Ichthyologist, what more could you ask? When a novel opens with a naked redhead jumping into a shark infested swimming pool, it kind of grabs your attention. The pace hardly lets up through this short but snappy bit of hard-boiled sun-drenched private eye fun. The above scene met unlicensed PI's Ben Shock and Charity Tucker as they pulled into their new client's home in the sleepy, early 70's Gulf Coast town of Singing River, Mississippi. Their assignment, they find out while drying out from a futile rescue attempt, is to look into a rash of accidents on the Dantzler family's pioneering offshore oil platform. After a trip to the platform and another suspicious death, they find themselves investigating more than delayed schedules and improperly mixed drilling mud. Firmly in the tradition of Hammett and Chandler, yet with updated sensibilities and topical concerns, "A Requiem of Sharks" is a classical mystery thriller set midway between Southern California and Florida. It drags you along with a quippy, first-person narration, and though always a bit self-referentially irreverent is in the end a rip-roaring series of twists and turns ending in a most satisfying "drawing room scene" in the middle of a direct hurricane hit on Singing River. The Lustful Ichthyologist? You'll just have to read this one to find out :-). "Requiem" appears to be one of a series involving Ben and Charity, and the others are definitely on my watch list: A Parliament of Owls, A Murder of Crows and A Sounder of Swine. "Patrick Buchanan is the pseudonym of a best-selling author and prize-winning movie maker" according to the jacket, and this is either Edwin Corley (according to the Library of Congress on-line catalog, which however isn't aware of the other books by "Buchanan"), or Edwin Corley and Jack Murphy, according to one bookseller's listing. Highly recommended for the simple fun that's too hard to find.