Chasing the Dragon

Publishers Weekly

Edgar-finalist Stansberry's strong, no-nonsense crime novel, the first in a new series, pulls few punches. In San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, Giovanni Mancuso is dying of cancer, but he knows somebody is stalking him. Just before his killer smothers him with a pillow, Mancuso mumbles, "My son will track you down... my son, the cop, my son..." The son, Dante Mancuso, is working in New Orleans for "the company," a nebulous organization that operates just this side of the law. A representative of the company, Anita Blonde, tells him to return to San Francisco for his father's funeral. There he infiltrates a heroin-smuggling operation, which leads to murder and the opportunity to avenge his father's death. Well researched, with ample local color-most of the action takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area-this is a gripping novel with unforeseeable plot twists and some incendiary scenes. Stansberry (The Last Days of Il Duce) has a fine eye for detail that prevents his often grim narrative from becoming merely ghoulish; he evokes the nightmarish criminal underworld without making it too depressing and his protagonist is believable and strangely admirable, even when disposing of a body in San Francisco Bay. This gritty, noirish exercise in murder and drugs feels uncomfortably like the real thing. Agent, Fred Hill. (Oct. 29) FYI: Stansberry has also been a Hammett Prize finalist. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Sent to his San Francisco hometown by the "company" to infiltrate a drug-smuggling operation possibly involving his uncle, ex-homicide detective Dante Mancuso first attends the funeral of his father. Though cancer claimed him, the old man thought someone was trying to kill him, and "someone" does kill Dante's uncle. Police tap Dante for the murder, but he's able to complete his assignment. Noir fans will enjoy this new series opener's effective blend of police procedure, covert agendas, personal vendetta, and previous unsolved crime, splayed out in changing Italian/Chinese neighborhoods. Edgar Award finalist Stansberry (The Last Days of Il Duce) lives in San Francisco. [See Mystery Prepub, LJ 6/1/04; coming in November from Hard Case Crime is another Stansberry noir crime novel, The Confession.-Ed.] Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In the first of a series, a former San Francisco cop working for a mysterious security organization goes back home to tackle a treacherously slippery case. The assignment is routine: arrange a heroin buy that will trap ex-cons Joe Williams and Yusef Fakir in a DEA sting. But Dante Mancuso can't muster any appetite for the job. He's not eager to return to the town he left seven years ago after butting heads with his superiors over a murder confession he insisted was a cover-up; he's even less eager to see Marilyn Visconti, the girl he left behind; and he's not happy about the coincidental death of his cancer-stricken father from an overdose of pain medication just as Dante's getting the assignment. Even though most people agree that Giovanni Mancuso's death can be put down to natural causes, nobody thinks that when Dante's Uncle Salvatore is gunned down in his home. Spotted leaving the building after failing to report the body, Dante naturally becomes a top priority of SFPD Homicide Det. Frank Ying. The pair's wary dance of mutual suspicion-a sentiment echoed in Dante's relations with Marilyn, his old lover, and his new, the improbably named Anita Blonde-perfectly sets the tone for a denouement that turns out to be anything but routine. Though Stansberry's mastery of tones (Manifesto for the Dead, 2000, etc.) is pretty much limited to the elegiac, nobody works his patch of funereal noir to sadder effect.