Domenic Stansberry

“Back in North Beach, the streets were crammed with ghosts.”

"You didn't get rich, unless you were willing to stink, Dante's father used to say, and you didn't stay rich if you dressed in anything other than a torn sweater."

Dante Mancuso, the “nose of noses”, is back for a fourth book! The quote above is in reference to the Sicilians in San Francisco making money from crabbing and fishing down at the wharf. In this book, it's the Rossi family money, very, very much like the Alioto family in real life. Wink, wink.

Ru Shen’s diary. the Empress Building, and Love Wu. And Dante's involvement with the company. All of those were good plotlines! The Marilyn plotline, which I disliked in book three, still continued to drag the book down, and was another disappointment. I didn't care much for the end of this book either. Still, it was a better read than the third book, but not as entertaining as the first two of the series!

"The room had that old wop smell. Tobacco. Wine. Fish."

My grandpa smelled exactly like that! With liver and onions on the side...

“We are all fish, the old man whispered. We all get caught in the net.”… (mehr)

Dante Mancuso, and his “impossibly long nose”, is back! Still in San Francisco, still in the North Beach part of it. I wish I could hang out at Serafina’s - order a spaghetti from Stella and listen to the old Italian men arguing over nothing, and everything!

As for the book, I didn't really enjoy it. Number one, there wasn't enough action, or enough Dante. And, I ended up not liking Marilyn, at all. And number two, the plot about Owens, the bank robbery, and the whole SLA was just boring to me. To be honest, if this had been the first North Beach Mystery, I probably wouldn't have read the sequels. I hope the fourth book is more like the first two!

"Meanwhile, the rain was falling. It was an old rain. Blood puddled in the rain along with the oil. There was the smell of gasoline in the air, but it didn't matter. It was a rain that had been falling for a long time. It didn't clean anything, but it kept falling anyway."

That is a well written ending!… (mehr)

“But sometimes people just did not want to bury their dead.”

This is a melancholy read, full of sadness and death, but I really liked it! The first three pages are amazing, and set the tone for the book. Dante is investigating the death of an old friend/lover, and the ghosts of his, and his neighborhood's past, follow him everywhere. Everything, and everyone, in this story seem maudlin - remembering the old days, while the new San Francisco has changed in ways that are no longer recognizable. The time period of this tale is right at the precipice when the dotcom boom went bust, and The City was irrevocably changed. For the worse, most 'old timers' believe.
Like I said, I really enjoyed reading this, as I did the first one, and I'm eager to read number three. Dante is such a strong character, and I love all the Italian life detailed on these pages. And I've always been a sucker for anything in, or on, North Beach!… (mehr)

"Sometimes, I close my eyes and imagine myself at the top of Mt. Tamalpais, the jagged peak that overlooks Marin."

Set in Marin County, California - where I live! Actually, the first four paragraphs of the preface are really good descriptions of the area surrounding Mt. Tam! "The roads spiderweb down the hills...", man that's right on point! And my hometown gets a mention on page 45! “... rumors, unsubstantiated, about secret liaisons in a hotel in Novato.” Woot woot!

The blurb on the front says it all: "Was he an innocent man... or a depraved killer?" Well, read it and find out! Some of the psychological pieces were a little boring for me, but the crime(s) and the doubt shed on them kept my interest throughout! And all of the Marin County mentions just tickled me! I'm glad I picked this up!… (mehr)