What do you think?
Rate this book
Jack Dwyer #6
A Cry of Shadows
Jack Dwyer is hired to deal with "some problems" caused by residents of a homeless shelter located near a chic, downtown restaurant. Before Dwyer can even act on his orders from one restaurant owner, he is fired by a second. Then, several days later, the first owner, a man named Coburn, is murdered, and his gorgeous, none-too-grieving widow re-hires Dwyer to locate the killer. Lots of people have a motive: Coburn was a womanizer and a snob. The restaurant staff hated him for being abusive and demanding; Anton, the second owner, hated him for sleeping with his teenaged daughter; the woman who runs the homeless shelter hated him for jilting her. Jack Dwyer remains one of the easiest mystery protagonists to like, and a very "real" character in this very entertaining addition to the Jack Dwyer series.
144 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1990
3 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
About the author
Ed Gorman
468 books121 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Edward Joseph Gorman Jr. was a prolific American author and anthologist, widely recognized for his contributions to crime, mystery, western, and horror fiction. Born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Gorman spent much of his life in the Midwest, drawing on that experience to set many of his novels in small towns. After working over two decades in advertising, political speechwriting, and industrial filmmaking, he published his first novel, Rough Cut, in 1984 and soon transitioned to full-time writing. His fiction is often praised for its emotional depth, suspenseful storytelling, and nuanced characters. Gorman wrote under the pseudonyms Daniel Ransom and Robert David Chase, and contributed to publications such as Mystery Scene, Cemetery Dance, and Black Lizard. He co-founded Mystery Scene magazine and served as its editor and publisher until 2002, continuing his “Gormania” column thereafter. His works have been adapted for film and graphic novels, including The Poker Club and Cage of Night. In comics, he wrote for DC and Dark Horse. Diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2002, he continued writing despite his illness until his passing in 2016. Critics lauded him as one of the most original crime writers of his generation and a “poet of dark suspense.”
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Edward Joseph Gorman Jr. was a prolific American author and anthologist, widely recognized for his contributions to crime, mystery, western, and horror fiction. Born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Gorman spent much of his life in the Midwest, drawing on that experience to set many of his novels in small towns. After working over two decades in advertising, political speechwriting, and industrial filmmaking, he published his first novel, Rough Cut, in 1984 and soon transitioned to full-time writing. His fiction is often praised for its emotional depth, suspenseful storytelling, and nuanced characters. Gorman wrote under the pseudonyms Daniel Ransom and Robert David Chase, and contributed to publications such as Mystery Scene, Cemetery Dance, and Black Lizard. He co-founded Mystery Scene magazine and served as its editor and publisher until 2002, continuing his “Gormania” column thereafter. His works have been adapted for film and graphic novels, including The Poker Club and Cage of Night. In comics, he wrote for DC and Dark Horse. Diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2002, he continued writing despite his illness until his passing in 2016. Critics lauded him as one of the most original crime writers of his generation and a “poet of dark suspense.”
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 26, 2023
Another great mystery by the late Ed Gorman.
Former cop turned P.I. Jack Dwyer has his hands full right before Christmas.
The owner of a fashionable nightclub asks Jack to see if someone has been breaking into the club from the back alley.
Jack feels there's much more going on...and soon the owner of the club is dead and Jack is elbow deep into a mystery.
Set in 1989(and published in 1990) this mystery also talks about the issue of the homeless. In that regard, the story is timeless, in that we are still dealing with it, and have no solid answers.
The last novel in this series, I put off reading it for a year, because I knew it was the last one..
RIP Ed Gorman, a fantastic writer.
Former cop turned P.I. Jack Dwyer has his hands full right before Christmas.
The owner of a fashionable nightclub asks Jack to see if someone has been breaking into the club from the back alley.
Jack feels there's much more going on...and soon the owner of the club is dead and Jack is elbow deep into a mystery.
Set in 1989(and published in 1990) this mystery also talks about the issue of the homeless. In that regard, the story is timeless, in that we are still dealing with it, and have no solid answers.
The last novel in this series, I put off reading it for a year, because I knew it was the last one..
RIP Ed Gorman, a fantastic writer.
August 23, 2021
This time, Dwyer is hired to investigate a homeless person who is sneaking into a top tier restaurant. The owner is murdered shortly thereafter. Twists an durns and plenty of action. Highly recommended.
August 13, 2015
There's no clue in A Cry of Shadows that Jack Dwyer would not be back. No hint his strangest and most engrossing mystery would be his last—the last one he solves, anyway. The biggest mystery, his disappearance, remains to this day.
It's been a quarter century since Dwyer, the cop who went private so he could pursue an acting career, went the way of Amelia Earhart. His creator, Ed Gorman, was at the top of his game. A Cry of Shadows was the fifth Jack Dwyer novel in Gorman's debut crime series. It won the admiration of top writers in the genre:
Road to Perdition author Max Allan Collins: “A Cry of Shadows is a brave, sad novel that will both move and shock readers. In a genre awash with trendy, yuppie private eyes, Jack Dwyer is a convincing man of the people.”
Loren D. Estleman: “A Cry of Shadows bears echoes of the early John D. MacDonald. Ed Gorman's lean prose and deep compassion set his books apart from everything else in the genre.”
Bill Pronzini: “Gorman at his most daring—a detective novel that is also a novel of character, social conscience and quiet horror.”
I agree with everything these guys said. As for F. Paul Wilson's prediction when it came out in 1990 that A Cry of Shadows “will touch you as deeply as anything you'll read this year,” it touched me as deeply as anything I've read in recent memory. It's out of print. I first read it last night, thanks to the Internet and people who sell used books.
I'd already read the first four Jack Dwyer mysteries on my laptop. Gordian Knot Books recently reissued them on Kindle. The first four, along with Gorman's debut crime novel, Rough Cut, which Gordian Knot mistakenly calls the first Jack Dwyer mystery. I can understand the mistake, as the protagonist, Michael Ketchum, is clearly Jack Dwyer trapped in an advertising executive's body, which Gorman clearly recognized at some point, releasing him to be himself in the subsequent Dwyer novels. But that Gordian Knot has failed to reissue A Cry of Shadows—the last and best of the series—is the bigger mistake. Fortunately, with the ease and speed of ebook publishing, it should be easily correctable. As it is, my St. Martin's Press first edition of A Cry of Shadows, originally owned by the Peters Township Library in McMurray, PA, will some day be a valuable collectible.
About the novel? The story? Jack Dwyer's final case? Rather than try to rewrite whomever wrote the fine jacket flap teaser—I'm guessing Ed Gorman himself--I'll simply give you a little of that evocative prose:
"It is Christmastime. Inside the fashionable Avanti nightclub, the young, rich, and self-indulgent patrons celebrate with fine, exotic cuisine and the best champagne amid warm and inviting surroundings. Outside, in the bitter cold, shadowy derelicts beg for scraps of food, sleep where and when they can, and live out their existences in bleak anonymity.
"Two worlds in seeming opposition: one full of light and warmth and pleasure, the other full of darkness and cold and misery. Yet something connects them. Something deadly."
Jack Dwyer may be gone for good, but he's left us with some haunting memories, A Cry of Shadows the most haunting of all.
It's been a quarter century since Dwyer, the cop who went private so he could pursue an acting career, went the way of Amelia Earhart. His creator, Ed Gorman, was at the top of his game. A Cry of Shadows was the fifth Jack Dwyer novel in Gorman's debut crime series. It won the admiration of top writers in the genre:
Road to Perdition author Max Allan Collins: “A Cry of Shadows is a brave, sad novel that will both move and shock readers. In a genre awash with trendy, yuppie private eyes, Jack Dwyer is a convincing man of the people.”
Loren D. Estleman: “A Cry of Shadows bears echoes of the early John D. MacDonald. Ed Gorman's lean prose and deep compassion set his books apart from everything else in the genre.”
Bill Pronzini: “Gorman at his most daring—a detective novel that is also a novel of character, social conscience and quiet horror.”
I agree with everything these guys said. As for F. Paul Wilson's prediction when it came out in 1990 that A Cry of Shadows “will touch you as deeply as anything you'll read this year,” it touched me as deeply as anything I've read in recent memory. It's out of print. I first read it last night, thanks to the Internet and people who sell used books.
I'd already read the first four Jack Dwyer mysteries on my laptop. Gordian Knot Books recently reissued them on Kindle. The first four, along with Gorman's debut crime novel, Rough Cut, which Gordian Knot mistakenly calls the first Jack Dwyer mystery. I can understand the mistake, as the protagonist, Michael Ketchum, is clearly Jack Dwyer trapped in an advertising executive's body, which Gorman clearly recognized at some point, releasing him to be himself in the subsequent Dwyer novels. But that Gordian Knot has failed to reissue A Cry of Shadows—the last and best of the series—is the bigger mistake. Fortunately, with the ease and speed of ebook publishing, it should be easily correctable. As it is, my St. Martin's Press first edition of A Cry of Shadows, originally owned by the Peters Township Library in McMurray, PA, will some day be a valuable collectible.
About the novel? The story? Jack Dwyer's final case? Rather than try to rewrite whomever wrote the fine jacket flap teaser—I'm guessing Ed Gorman himself--I'll simply give you a little of that evocative prose:
"It is Christmastime. Inside the fashionable Avanti nightclub, the young, rich, and self-indulgent patrons celebrate with fine, exotic cuisine and the best champagne amid warm and inviting surroundings. Outside, in the bitter cold, shadowy derelicts beg for scraps of food, sleep where and when they can, and live out their existences in bleak anonymity.
"Two worlds in seeming opposition: one full of light and warmth and pleasure, the other full of darkness and cold and misery. Yet something connects them. Something deadly."
Jack Dwyer may be gone for good, but he's left us with some haunting memories, A Cry of Shadows the most haunting of all.
May 24, 2008
nice little jack dwyer mystery. good whodunit. venue is the Avanti nightclub.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews