Naked Moon

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Set in San Francisco in the crumbling vestiges of Italian North Beach, Domenic Stansberry’s latest novel plunges once again into the noir underworld of Dante Mancuso. This new installment of Stansberry’s critically acclaimed series, Naked Moon, unearths a past Mancuso had hoped to escape. Before becoming a private investigator, Dante worked for a secret corporate security firm---known simply as the company---that prized effectiveness over legality. When Dante left, it was not on good terms. So he made sure to take enough inside information to keep himself safe from reprisal. Dante, however, has his own secrets; for example, he doesn’t ask his cousin Gary questions about how he keeps the family warehousing business---the one where Dante is a silent partner---in the black, while everyone else’s has failed. When SFPD Detective Leanora Chin starts asking questions, Gary turns to the company for help, which they’re willing to provide, so long as Dante agrees to settle his past debts by doing them one last favor: the type of favor that could drag him under for good. Edgar Award winner Domenic Stansberry is one of the most talented crime novelists working today. His novels are dark, lyrical, and widely acclaimed, and Naked Moon is no exception as it captures the sense of dread, paranoia, and quiet despair that cling to a man and a part of a city living on borrowed time.From Publishers WeeklyIn Edgar-winner Stansberry's strong fourth novel to feature San Francisco PI Dante Mancuso (after 2008's The Ancient Rain), leaked secrets about the company, Mancuso's shadowy former employer (a front for intelligence operations), prompt the company to end the stalemate that allowed Dante to walk away in the previous book. Meanwhile, Leanora Chin, a cop with Special Investigations, is threatening Dante's cousin Gary, who runs a shady warehouse operation. Gary fears the wrath of the powerful Wu Benevolent Association if he cooperates with Chin. The company tells Gary it can halt the investigation if Dante will help the company. Trapped in a three-way vise, Dante searches for a way to neutralize the explicit threats to his cousin and others dear to him, while knowing that the only permanent solution is to disappear. San Francisco's North Beach is a virtual character as the stoic Dante fearlessly plays out the poor hand he's been dealt against a table of sharks with all the chips in the pot. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistStarred Review We’ve said it all along: whereas others play at noir, Stansberry delivers the real thing. That was true with the marvelous Ancient Rain (2008), and it’s even more true with this latest entry in the Dante Mancuso series. This time the San Francisco P.I.’s shady past (working for a clandestine government security outfit called the Company) comes back to haunt him. Ordinarily, you don’t ever quit the Company, but Dante managed it through some tricky leverage; now the Company has its own leverage in the form of Dante’s cousin, who has turned to the group for help when his warehousing business goes south. “It was nice to think you had a choice, that your actions made a difference one way or another,” Dante muses, but he knows better. Think of the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls—Robert Jordan with a Gatling gun between his legs and the Fascists coming up the mountain en masse—and you’ll have some idea of just how dark the world looks to Dante’s shrouded eyes (and, unlike Jordan, Dante harbors no illusions about honor). As always, Stansberry combines his unrelenting noir world view with remarkably lyrical prose. You want a similar title? Try Mozart’s Requiem. --Bill Ott