Dead Air

by Ed Goldberg

New York gumshoe Lenny Schneider moves out to Portland, Oregon, and in with his buddy Walter, a controversial radio show host at Kook-FM.counterculture is alive and raging at Kook, and soon the New York dick finds himself embroiled in murder. Two of Walter's colleagues have been killed with a bayonet from Walter's knife collection, and Lenny just may be the next request on the murderer's hit list...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425162974
• ISBN13: 9780425162972
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Berkley Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Mystery with a side of Schmaltz

As a New Yorker who likes her mystery novels, I definitely enjoyed Dead Air. Of course, knowing a bissel of Yiddish helped. But I don't know the Northwest and appreciated Mr. Goldberg's descriptions which practically take you there. His characters are people we all know and love (that is, if you know anyone from the Left or Right). The author brings his own judgements to the table (of course), but they don't overwhelm you.The kind of book that almost made me miss my subway stop!

A funny hardboiled mystery

What happens to a youthful radical when he becomes an adult and needs employment? If you are native new Yorker Lenny Schneider, you become a private detective who works on cases that interest you and provide you enough cash to pay for the bare necessities. Lenny's latest case is accepted because his client is former Brooklyn Dodger Elmo "Deak" Newcombe. He wants Lenny to find his daughter's burial site and bring the body home where she belongs. Lenny reluctantly flies to Portland where he meets his old sixties buddy, Walter Egon, who is the host of a controversial counterculture radio show on KOOK-FM. Lenny soon learns that his current case is based on false information and Walter is the prime suspect in the bayonet killing of a rival kook. When a second radio employee is killed, Lenny works gratis to prove his friend is innocent in spite of the growing evidence to the contrary. Ed Goldberg has a unique style and voice that allows him to imbue a realistic authenticity in his intriguing characters, especially his fellow New Yorkers (feels autobiographical). Anyone who can come up with a name like Elmo Deak Newcombe knows how to pay homage to dem bums. Though the well designed mystery is serious and dangerous, Mr. Goldberg's delightful sense of humor turns the novel into a frolicking reading experience that brilliantly combines the tragic with the jocular. DEAD AIR is false advertising as the book is anything but its title since it is a real treasure to be read several times over so as to not miss some of the more subtle sense of the absurds peppered throughout the whole. Hopefully, Lenny will appear in more novels perhaps with an infant holding a rattle that when shook says: "The Giants win the pennant". Harriet Klausner