In a story that could have been ripped from the headlines, Jeremiah Healy has put forth a great new John Francis Cuddy mystery. The book is called Spiral and was published by Pocket Books.
Nancy Meagher is an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County. She is also Boston P.I. John Francis Cuddy's girlfriend. Nancy has to go out to San Francisco for a conference. She wants John to go with her but he's on a case for an old friend.
Nancy's plane crashes and John is left alone and hurting. And not for the first time. His wife Beth had died sometime before. John sometimes went to the cemetery to get things off his chest. Talking to a dead wife sometime brought John back to the real world.
In the aftermath of Nancy's death, John is numb. He goes about his days on autopilot. Then he gets a call from an old friend, Justo Vega. John and Justo had served together in Viet Nam. They were part of an MP squad headed by Colonel Nicolas Helides. The Colonel was known as the "Skipper" because of his love for boating.
It seems that the Skipper needs some help. The Skipper's granddaughter had been killed at a birthday party at his house. The police were not doing anything constructive and the Skipper wanted John to find the killer. John reluctantly agrees to look into the matter.
Spi Held was the leader of the band Spiral. Way back at the tail end of the sixties, Spiral was a hot band. Then disco came and went and Spiral drove down the road of so many bands. Once out there and then has beens. Now Spiral was trying to make reappearance on the scene. Sharing the spotlight in the band with Spi was his thirteen-year-old daughter, Veronica, also known as Very. She was a sizzling, hot Lolita with a scorching voice. She was going to help put Spiral back on the map.
The only problem is that Very's dad Spi is actually Spiro Helides, the Skipper's son. And Very is the very dead granddaughter of the Skipper.
John investigates the death and runs into more resistance than help. The local cops want Cuddy to stay out of the way. The various band members want to get on with life in the band. And the Skipper's young wife wants Cuddy for something else.
As Cuddy investigates he gets a strong feeling that the Skipper's world is less than perfect. His wife seems to be having affairs. Spi's wife sees a spiritualist and his brother David is a manic-depressive who hides from view in the Skipper's home. A gut named Tranh is part of the Skipper's family. He doesn't want Cuddy around. Does he have something to hide or is he just overprotective of the Skipper?
The more that Cuddy finds out, the more muddled the investigation becomes. Very was not what everybody thought she was. And the closer Cuddy gets to an answer, the more roadblocks are put up.
Spiral could have been ripped from the pages of a newspaper on two fronts. The first being a parallel to the Jon Bonet Ramsey murder. That case has a lot of suspects and no clear motive. The other front is that a lot of older bands are reappearing on the music scene. It seems that that a lot of parents just can't handle Gen X and Y'ers music and look to the good old Rock days of the 70's and 80's.
Spiral is a tough as nails mystery. John Francis Cuddy comes from the same town as Spenser and is just as good a detective. Jeremiah Healy is one of today's premiere mystery writers.