77th Street Requiem

A Maggie MacGowen Mystery #4

by Wendy Hornsby

Maggie looks into the decades-old murder of a controversial copA long time ago, Roy Frady was a perfect cop. Now he’s perfect fodder for one of Maggie MacGowen’s documentaries. Frady worked narcotics in the Seventy-seventh Street Division as part of a unit nicknamed the Four Horsemen. A merry band of iron-fisted brothers, they kept their district clean of drugs until a litany of brutality charges caused their downfall. Not long after, Roy Frady was found with a 9-mm slug in his skull. The case remained unsolved for two decades. One of the Four Horsemen was Mike Trent, who went on to become a homicide detective and the love of Maggie’s life. Through the years, Frady’s file never left his desk, and as he approaches retirement he vows to close the case. Maggie plans a documentary about Mike’s investigation, unaware that she and her camera will find things in his past that are too ugly to be known.

Genres: Mystery

273 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

I can’t remember ever not knowing that I was a writer. When I was in the second grade, because I was forever writing little stories, my teacher, a lovely woman named Barbara Heath, gave me her own copy of Little Women, to keep. Hardcover, illustrated, no less. The story wasn’t so much magic for me as was the character of Jo March. Somehow I knew Jo, I pretended I was her sometimes, and knew I was going to grow up to be, as she was, a writer.

When I was in fourth grade, I turned pro. My essay, “Why I love Camp Nawakwa,” won a community contest, earning me a camp scholarship, and my future was set. Sort of. Loving Camp Nawakwa was my writing pinnacle for quite a while.

When it was time for college, I headed off to UCLA, where I tried on a large number of majors before I decided on History. History, well told, has more romance, adventure, intrigue, courage, provocative mystery than any fiction that can be imagined. Besides, the process of historical research and writing mysteries have a great deal in common. One snoops through the remnants of people’s lives – real or fictional – asking the important who, what, where, and when questions and implying insight with the hope of making sense of things. The study of History is great preparation for a writer, especially a writer of mysteries.

The afternoon that I learned I had passed my comprehensive exams for the Masters degree in History at CSULB, I was hired to teach History as an adjunct at Long Beach City College. Over the next decades I taught, went to school some more, raised two beautiful babies to adulthood, acquired a full-time tenured position at LBCC, and, somehow, between school and soccer and baseball and school plays, managed to get seven mystery novels and many, many short stories published. Amazing how that happened.

When my kids, Alyson and Christopher, were of a certain age, I took them to visit The Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, where Louisa May Alcott grew up and where she wrote Little Women. I stood in her upstairs bedroom, beside the little half-moon desk where she created Jo March, and thanked her for giving a little girl a bit of courage to believe that she, too, could be a writer.

Wendy Hornsby is the Edgar Award winning author of the Maggie MacGowen mysteries.

Reviews

[Liz Krummell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is based on a true story which made it more interesting, nice they tied up story line from Book 1 regarding her sister

[Roberta]

Hard boiled

[Mike Orta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author takes a real event and factionalizes the characters and incidents surrounding it. Crime, criminals and police during the Patty Hearst incident.

[Milley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have now re-read the first 4 books. I liked them all. I like the way she includes LA and California history. It always makes me go research what it is based on.

I really enjoyed this complex plot. In this case though there was a bit of a twist at the end that i thought actually was unnecessary.
SPOILER ALERT



I thought the book could have ended with Ridgeway. In fact it took me a bit to link Michelle with Kellenberger but then i realized the link. I actually had to go back and re-read. This is one of those books that i start to draw a little diagram with the linkages between the characters. But i started too late and missed some key ones. I never clued in (even now) to how Joann was linked in though.

The one thing for me that i am less thrilled with is Maggie. and i agree with another reviewer that although i am not a prude and have read my share of bodice rippers with way more sex, the sex in these books seems heavy handed. And then i realized that i think it is 1980s style woman in a man's world. To be just as good as a man she has to be a man. She is written as a man. Yes yes generalizations... I also find Maggie kind of flat. There actually seems to be very little passion. YEs she talks about how important her film work is but i don't see it in her life. There is very little angst as i would expect from an artist.

But i will keep reading and i believe the next few Maggie books will be undiscovered country for me...

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

77th STREET REQUIEM - G+
Hornsby, Wendy - 4th in Maggie MacGowen series

Despite the numerous suspects and motives, the murder of L.A. copy Roy Frady has gone unsolved for 20 years. Intrigued by the case, filmmaker Maggie MacGown hopes to do a documentary on it. But the deeper Maggie delves, the more she and those helping her are in danger.

Not quite as good as the previous three books, but still a good read.

[Lori]

As a child of the 60's I especially enjoy this tale