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Jacket by: Stan Zagorowski
Blurb: “Meet Detective Sergeant Mulheisen, latest addition to the list of appealing, memorable fictional cops:
"He was a well-built man, nearly forty. He was just under six feet and had a small but noticeable bulge at his waist. He had a high forehead and his eyes were set so deeply that it was not easy to see that they were pale blue. His most notable feature, however, was his teeth. They were long teeth, slightly bucked, and they were distinctly separate. For this reason the street people called him 'Fang. It was 'Sergeant Fang?"
Mul is a Detroit policeman whose precinct includes several run-down neighborhoods sur; rounding an exclusive enclave called, ironically enough, Indian Village. News has just broken about the indictment of all the executives at Fidelity Trust in a giant insurance swindle. The exception is lawyer Arthur Clip-pert, a "Village" resident who appears to be the only one coming out of the affair smelling like a rose. "The Flying Clipper" is remembered as a terrific all-American halfback, with only contempt for his opponents, and his name has been bandied about in political back rooms as a possible gubernatorial prospect.
All told, Arthur is a pretty well-known man about Detroit, so when his beautiful wife's shot, stabbed, and otherwise battered nude body turns up on a neighbor's doorstep, the police are prepared for the case to be a really big one, and Sergeant Fang is right in the middle of it.
There are plenty of leads to follow up: Is there any connection between the murder and
the swindle and, not so incidentally, the twenty million dollars still missing from Fidelity's till? Is it a case of cherchez the husband, who has an apparently authentic alibi? On the other hand, how about the million-dollar insurance policy on his wife's life payable to him? And where does the bullet-ridden body of a burglar suspected of breaking into the Clipperts' home fit in? And are the series of robberies at Jasper Lake, where the Clipperts have a summer cottage, merely a coincidence? Who is the sun-tanned stranger who seems to be tracking down the same leads just a step ahead of Mulheisen?
It takes a blizzard that isolates the entire city and a lot of work on Sergeant Fang's part, both head and foot, before the case comes to a satisfying, ironic close.
Every now and then a new writer comes along whose work has an extra-special something that will establish him as a success in the mystery field. Jon Jackson is that kind of author, and The Diehard is a superlative novel that focuses on the brutality and mindless terror of violent murder and the inescapable isolation of the human condition.
About the Author
JON A. JACKSON was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, and attended Wayne University in Detroit. He was graduated with a B.A. from the University of Montana and an M.F.A. from the Writers Workshop at the University of lowa. He now lives in Montana, where he combines writing, carpentry, fishing and whitewater canoeing.
Printed in U.S.A.”