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North Beach Mystery #3
The Ancient Rain
Edgar Award winner and master of contemporary noir Domenic Stansberry returns to San Francisco’s North Beach and Dante Mancuso, the dark PI who grew up on its tough streets.
After a career with a shadowy security firm with interests on both sides of the law, Dante has come home to put all that behind him and has gone to work for a private investigator. A call alerts him early one morning that Bill Owens, a fellow PI, has been charged with a notorious thirty-year-old killing. Bill was involved in a political group in the late sixties, which among other pranks and small-time crimes, held up a bank. Except that time, an innocent bystander was shot and killed. To clear Owens of these charges, Dante will have to retrace the original investigation through San Francisco’s radical underground and bring in the man who was pulling the strings.
The Ancient Rain is a chilling novel from one of crime fiction’s finest. Stansberry spools out a narrative filled with deceit and betrayal, and in his hands the line between justice and revenge is razor sharp.
After a career with a shadowy security firm with interests on both sides of the law, Dante has come home to put all that behind him and has gone to work for a private investigator. A call alerts him early one morning that Bill Owens, a fellow PI, has been charged with a notorious thirty-year-old killing. Bill was involved in a political group in the late sixties, which among other pranks and small-time crimes, held up a bank. Except that time, an innocent bystander was shot and killed. To clear Owens of these charges, Dante will have to retrace the original investigation through San Francisco’s radical underground and bring in the man who was pulling the strings.
The Ancient Rain is a chilling novel from one of crime fiction’s finest. Stansberry spools out a narrative filled with deceit and betrayal, and in his hands the line between justice and revenge is razor sharp.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2008
About the author
Domenic Stansberry
26 books45 followersCrime novelist, editor and essayist known for his innovative noir fiction that skirts the edges of the genre while exploring the intricacies of criminal consciousness. The Lizard, finalist for the 2026 Hammett Prize, is the latest of his award-winning novels.
His other recent books include The White Devil, a sultry, decadent thriller that received the Hammett in 2017. An earlier novel, The Confession, received the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and is regarded as a neo-noir classic.
Other work includes the North Beach Mystery Series—featuring investigator Dante Mancuso — which received wide praise for its portrayal of the ethnic and political subcultures of San Francisco. Books from that series include The Ancient Rain, named several years after its original publication as one of the best crime novels of the decade by Booklist. Stansberry’s novels have been translated into numerous languages, with editions in Japanese, Italian, French, Spanish and Polish among others.
He lives with his wife, poet Gillian Conoley, and their daughter, Gillis, in a small town north of San Francisco.
His other recent books include The White Devil, a sultry, decadent thriller that received the Hammett in 2017. An earlier novel, The Confession, received the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and is regarded as a neo-noir classic.
Other work includes the North Beach Mystery Series—featuring investigator Dante Mancuso — which received wide praise for its portrayal of the ethnic and political subcultures of San Francisco. Books from that series include The Ancient Rain, named several years after its original publication as one of the best crime novels of the decade by Booklist. Stansberry’s novels have been translated into numerous languages, with editions in Japanese, Italian, French, Spanish and Polish among others.
He lives with his wife, poet Gillian Conoley, and their daughter, Gillis, in a small town north of San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 3, 2020
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!
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!
October 24, 2017
Interesting book but i did not like it as as much as the two stand alone's of his that I have read the White Devil and Confessions.
While I like how the story resolved itself I did not like how his relationship wound up. I did not find it to be a failure due to his dedication and single mindedness to his work but a failure on his part.
I'll think i'll wait till his next stand alone comes out.
While I like how the story resolved itself I did not like how his relationship wound up. I did not find it to be a failure due to his dedication and single mindedness to his work but a failure on his part.
I'll think i'll wait till his next stand alone comes out.
March 17, 2019
bob Kaufman, the SLA, and fifty Bay Area locales are borrowed for this book.
November 25, 2016
I didn't find any of the characters interesting or believable. I didn't care about any of them.
April 9, 2016
"Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!"
In April 1975 members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the group notorious for Patty Hearst kidnapping that happened a year earlier, robbed the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, California. During the robbery a customer of the bank, Myrna Opsahl, was accidentally shot and killed. This actual tragic event provides the setup for Domenic Stansberry’s fictional crime story / legal drama The Ancient Rain (2008), whose plot takes place in 2002 and deals with the long-delayed aftermath of this politically motivated robbery.
This is my first book by this celebrated author, Edgar Award winner for The Confession and Hammett Award finalist, and indeed it is a solid, compulsively readable, and - most importantly - well-written novel. I much prefer this book over cliché-ridden novels by John Grisham, mainly because of the palpable political and social contexts of the plot that provide depth usually missing in Grisham's books. I am quite eager to read other books by Mr. Stansberry.
Dante Mancuso, an ex-cop who works for an investigative firm, receives a phone call from his fellow investigator, Bill Owens, who is getting arrested for the twenty-seven-year-old murder committed by an SLA team. An ambitious prosecutor is reopening the case, ostensibly because one of the original witnesses who provided an alibi for Owens at the time of the shooting is ready to change her testimony. However, the real reason seems to be the much increased activity of homeland security forces that need to raise their profile and be more visible to the nervous public after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Dante is hired by influential friends of Owens to work on the defense and the author follows the case until the trial and verdict.
The best aspect of the novel is the juxtaposition between the SLA’s fight against the supposedly “fascist regime” of 1975 and the situation in 2002 with its oppressive atmosphere of curtailing civic freedoms owing to the ongoing "war on terror" after the 9/11 events. Another strength of the book is its cynicism in showing the real motives driving the legal system, which is not at all about justice but rather "about the prosecutor and his promotions, the newspaperman and his story, the next election and the allocation of the budget."
The rich tapestry of threads in The Ancient Rain includes a well-developed romantic plot that involves Dante, his wife Marilyn, and an admirer of hers; the extraordinary hospital-bed sex scene between Dante and Marilyn is powerful yet tactfully written. On the other hand, the depiction of human psychology is to me the weakest aspect of the novel. With the exception of Marilyn, the characters feel rather paper-thin, clichéd, and schematic, just about on Grisham's level, which is the main reason for my rounding the fractional rating down, from "very good" (setup of the plot, political and social themes) to just "good".
Three and a half stars.
In April 1975 members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the group notorious for Patty Hearst kidnapping that happened a year earlier, robbed the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, California. During the robbery a customer of the bank, Myrna Opsahl, was accidentally shot and killed. This actual tragic event provides the setup for Domenic Stansberry’s fictional crime story / legal drama The Ancient Rain (2008), whose plot takes place in 2002 and deals with the long-delayed aftermath of this politically motivated robbery.
This is my first book by this celebrated author, Edgar Award winner for The Confession and Hammett Award finalist, and indeed it is a solid, compulsively readable, and - most importantly - well-written novel. I much prefer this book over cliché-ridden novels by John Grisham, mainly because of the palpable political and social contexts of the plot that provide depth usually missing in Grisham's books. I am quite eager to read other books by Mr. Stansberry.
Dante Mancuso, an ex-cop who works for an investigative firm, receives a phone call from his fellow investigator, Bill Owens, who is getting arrested for the twenty-seven-year-old murder committed by an SLA team. An ambitious prosecutor is reopening the case, ostensibly because one of the original witnesses who provided an alibi for Owens at the time of the shooting is ready to change her testimony. However, the real reason seems to be the much increased activity of homeland security forces that need to raise their profile and be more visible to the nervous public after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Dante is hired by influential friends of Owens to work on the defense and the author follows the case until the trial and verdict.
The best aspect of the novel is the juxtaposition between the SLA’s fight against the supposedly “fascist regime” of 1975 and the situation in 2002 with its oppressive atmosphere of curtailing civic freedoms owing to the ongoing "war on terror" after the 9/11 events. Another strength of the book is its cynicism in showing the real motives driving the legal system, which is not at all about justice but rather "about the prosecutor and his promotions, the newspaperman and his story, the next election and the allocation of the budget."
The rich tapestry of threads in The Ancient Rain includes a well-developed romantic plot that involves Dante, his wife Marilyn, and an admirer of hers; the extraordinary hospital-bed sex scene between Dante and Marilyn is powerful yet tactfully written. On the other hand, the depiction of human psychology is to me the weakest aspect of the novel. With the exception of Marilyn, the characters feel rather paper-thin, clichéd, and schematic, just about on Grisham's level, which is the main reason for my rounding the fractional rating down, from "very good" (setup of the plot, political and social themes) to just "good".
Three and a half stars.
February 26, 2016
I was after a good mystery that would be a light vacation read. I was tempted to bail on this, but stayed mildly interested enough to finish it. It's about a cold case that gets reopened involving the SLA, and since the Patty Hearst kidnapping occurred within a 40-minute drive of my childhood home, I wanted to know what happened just out of familiarity. I found the shifting viewpoint to be particularly unsatisfying; for me, mysteries work best when they are mostly single p.o.v. with occasional digressions into other characters. I also thought that the title, which comes from a poet who lived during the original events, was kind of forced, as was the attempt to introduce talk about the poet into the story.
Basically, I was hoping to find a new reliable mystery writer to add to database, but I didn't like this enough to check out the other books by Stansberry featuring this particular detective. Maybe if I'd read them in order I would have gotten more into this.
Basically, I was hoping to find a new reliable mystery writer to add to database, but I didn't like this enough to check out the other books by Stansberry featuring this particular detective. Maybe if I'd read them in order I would have gotten more into this.
October 14, 2019
PI Bill Owens is in a serious jam. About to be charged with murder, he phones PI Dante Mancuso, to ask him to care for his two frightened kids. Though Owens is more colleague than friend, Dante agrees and is quickly carried back nearly 30 years, when the crime for which Owens is in the process of being cuffed was the stuff of major headlines. The Symbionese Liberation Army (think Patty Hearst) pulled off a bank robbery during which an innocent mother was gunned down. Eleanor Younger left her daughter to wait in the car, a vantage point that enabled the child to see and identify her mother's killer. Or so she said, over and over. Now that her finger is pointed at Bill Owens, the U.S. government, for complex reasons of its own, is deeply interested. Hired by Owens supporters for reasons almost as baroque, Dante finds himself a central figure in an investigation that does nothing but take unexpected turns, some of them achingly personal. One of my 10 best mysteries read in 2008.
September 5, 2008
I was looking forward to reading this one. I liked THE CONFESSION. But I'm getting bogged down in the first fifty pages. Maybe it's fatigue. I don't know. But I'll stick with it. I like reading P.I. books with a good setting.
UPDATE: I've moved away from this title. I'll probably return to it, but right now I'm too bushed to give it a fair read.
UPDATE: I've moved away from this title. I'll probably return to it, but right now I'm too bushed to give it a fair read.
November 21, 2016
A man is arrested for a murder 30 years ago. Why? Politics? Personal?
Set in SF Bay Area and involves SLA and historic cultural allusions. This book was primarily of interest to me since I used to live in that area and went to UC.
A meandering book. The private investigations seemed more an exercise in futility.
The major event at the end was predictable.
Set in SF Bay Area and involves SLA and historic cultural allusions. This book was primarily of interest to me since I used to live in that area and went to UC.
A meandering book. The private investigations seemed more an exercise in futility.
The major event at the end was predictable.
September 21, 2008
Good if you like noir - Stansberry is definitely a Hammett and Chandler wannabe, but fans of their work are often neglected for the typical thrillers and cozies. Not my cup of tea, but still good. Very evocative of San Francisco as well.
May 15, 2010
This wasn't quite as good as the first two, but still interesting. I like that there are continuing peripheral characters, like Stella at the local restaurant. It adds a lot to the familiarity of North Beach.
May 28, 2008
Evokes a feeling of San Fransico's recent past...
August 3, 2008
Another noir mystery set in San Francisco. Pretty dark but not totally dark, and beautifully written.
February 9, 2009
Nice page turner of conspiracy and murder set in San Francisco. Good airport book.
September 23, 2009
Seventh in a series set in the North Beach area of San Francisco.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews