The Fall-Down Artist

Read The Fall-Down Artist Storyline:

Estranged from his politically powerful father, Carroll Dorsey is an ex-college basketball star now working as a private detective. While investigating insurance and disability fraud he uncovers an unlikely, but dangerous, ring of schemers with ties to a political and social movement that his father opposes.Carroll Dorsey's the genuine article and so is his world.Drood Review of Mystery —Ted FizgeraldLipinski does everything right.Drood Review of Mystery —Ted FizgeraldLipinski excels at creating memorable characters.Pittsburgh Tribune —Rege BeheAmazon.com ReviewCarroll Dorsey was on his way to becoming a basketball star when an injury ended that dream. Now--in Thomas Lipinski's sharply underplayed first mystery--he's a private detective in Pittsburgh, working insurance fraud cases that seem to stand as metaphors for the way we live. Lipinski doesn't bang away at the symbolism--it just hangs there in the air like industrial smog as Dorsey tries to find a little truth and justice in a story that involves local militants who will do anything to save the steel industry. From Publishers WeeklyLipinski debuts with a downbeat, droll tale which, marked by several wily and congenial turns, cannily mines the Pittsburgh area. Carroll Dorsey, 30-ish and the son of a rich and powerful politician, is a classic underachiever: an ex-college basketball star, ex-Army MP and ex-investigator for the county DA's office, he's now romancing a nurse, drinking a lot of Rolling Rock and investigating suspect cases for an insurance company. Meanwhile his father, intent on importing high technology to the area, is driving what's left of the city's old metal industry under in the process. Largely by accident, Carroll discovers some of his dad's moves; several of his latest assignments involve men injured just moments before factory closings, all of whom managed to hire cars from the same place and showed up on the podium of Movement Together, a militant organization intent on saving the factories. Dorsey is a classic hangdog shamus, but he is also, in his dogged way, a moralist, a fighter and maybe even a survivor. Pittsburgh and the Allegheny region offer rich veins of grubby politics and street-level sleuthing. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.