My Darling Detective - Couverture rigide

Praise for What Is Left the Daughter: "Howard Norman is a genle, deliberate writer, and his humor is smart and dry [in this] novel about the illogic of love and the violent chaos it leaves in its wake."—New York Times Book Review   "You lean in, trying to catch every word, lulled by [Norman’s] voice as he describes the most ordinary lives that just happen to be punctuated by macabre accidents. . . . Norman offers a kind of rough-hewn poetry throughout [with an] ardor that shimmers just below the surface."—Washington Post   "It's easy to gush about Howard Norman. His 1994 novel, ‘The Bird Artist,’ a finalist for the National Book Award, is always at the top of my list when asked for reading recommendations and I don't know anyone who's been disappointed....He does it again in his latest novel, ‘What Is Left The Daughter.’... This is another Norman novel I will now gladly recommend."—Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“Norman is gifted at establishing atmosphere and character, and he pleasurably engages with old-fashioned crime-story patter ... Norman pulls off what old-school noir pros like Chandler and Goodis did: mixes romance with blood in the gutter, makes sure the bad guys get theirs, and ensures the good guys don't come out unscathed. An unconventional, lively literary mystery.”—Kirkus Reviews "Jacob and Martha are delightful characters, young lovers unraveling a complex and very personal mystery. This is a crowd-pleasing old school mystery novel."—Publishers Weekly

"[A] playful hand at work. Norman knows how to weave an enticing and satisfying mystery, one tantalizing thread at a time. And he left me wanting more of Jake and Martha." —The New York Times "Intellectually restless and self-aware... investigat[es] and re-creat[es] the comfort, longing and nostalgia that detective fiction provides for its consumers. At its heart, this is a story about the way reading and writing can serve as a counter to destruction and loneliness....[and] gives us many reasons to be hopeful." —The Washington Post "My Darling Detective is an enjoyable story full of choice phrases, light sex, and a great deal of classic noir dialogue...there’s more than a hint of The Thin Man and novels of that genre. [A]n enjoyable read, a mystery that is also a look at a young couple’s life in the ’70s, as well as a contrasting of the very opposite reaction two men have to the same war." —New York Journal of Books “Norman is gifted at establishing atmosphere and character, and he pleasurably engages with old-fashioned crime-story patter ... Norman pulls off what old-school noir pros like Chandler and Goodis did: mixes romance with blood in the gutter, makes sure the bad guys get theirs, and ensures the good guys don't come out unscathed. An unconventional, lively literary mystery.”—Kirkus Reviews "Jacob and Martha are delightful characters, young lovers unraveling a complex and very personal mystery. This is a crowd-pleasing old school mystery novel."—Publishers Weekly

A witty, engrossing homage to noir from National Book Award finalist Howard Norman Jacob Rigolet, a soon-to-be former assistant to a wealthy art collector, looks up from his seat at an auction—his mother, former head librarian at the Halifax Free Library, is walking almost casually up the aisle. Before a stunned audience, she flings an open jar of black ink at master photographer Robert Capa’s “Death on a Leipzig Balcony.” Jacob’s police detective fiancée, Martha Crauchet, is assigned to the ensuing interrogation. In  My Darling Detective, Howard Norman delivers adelivers a fond nod to classic noir, as Jacob’s understanding of the man he has always assumed to be his father unravels against the darker truth of Robert Emil, a Halifax police officer suspected but never convicted of murdering two Jewish residents during the shocking upswing of anti-Semitism in 1945. The denouement, involving a dire shootout and an emergency delivery—it’s the second Rigolet to be born in the Halifax Free Library in a span of three decades—is Howard Norman at his “provocative . . . haunting”* and uncannily moving best.     *Janet Maslin,  New York Times