Frankenstein Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Contemporary Critical Perspectives

From Booklist Dietrich "Deets" Shanahan is a 70-year-old Indianapolis private investigator. His current client is Luke Lindstrom, one-fourth of the quadruplet brothers who won a high-school basketball championship in hoop-crazy Indiana a decade earlier. Luke has taken quite a tumble from his salad days: he's a heroin addict who is sure someone is out to get him. One of his brothers was recently paralyzed in a fall, and another committed suicide in a leap from the upper stories of a Naptown hotel. Deets takes the case, but only after Luke's father employs a couple of hard guys to discourage him. Deets is old but doesn't scare. What he finds in the Lindstrom closet is a dysfunctional family dominated by a Bible-thumping, borderline psycho of a mother. This fourth Shanahan mystery is at its heart a serious examination of family relationships. Re-evaluating his own situation--he faces a difficult reunion with a long-estranged son--in light of the Lindstroms' pain, Deets concludes that some families are worth saving and some aren't Wes Lukowsky Product Description Ronald Tierney's Seventyish private detective, Deets Shanahan, stands out not only for his investigative efforts but for his warmth and often vulnerable humanity. This fourth outing presents the Indianapolis private eye with a case involving the conflicts in a tragic family while at the same time Deets is facing a crisis in his own personal life. The four brothers in the wealthy Lindstrom family - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - were star basketball players in high school and definitely headed for stardom in the game and in life. But not only have they not lived up to their promise of all-round success, they now seem in their adulthood to have been destined for disaster. Matthew has been crippled in a climbing accident, Mark threw himself from the top of a skyscraper, Luke has become a paranoid heroin addict. Only John seems to have escaped - so far.Meanwhile, Shanahan has a dread of his own: His grown son, who has been estranged from him since boyhood and whom he hasn't seen in many years, is arriving on a visit. It is Shanahan's live-in lady, Maureen, who provides the commonsense anchor that allows Shanahan to face his case, his clients - and, finally, his son. From Publishers Weekly Indianapolis PI Deets Shanahan is a 70-something loner who finds himself in the middle of a crowd in his fourth outing (after, most recently, Eclipse of the Heart). Love interest Maureen has moved into his house, and the son he hasn't seen in 40 years is coming to visit. Meanwhile he has a new client, a heroin addict named Luke, who is one of the famous Quad Squad?a set of quadruplet brothers who electrified Indiana during their high-school basketball years. With their glory days behind them, the brothers (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) have been showing an alarming tendency to literally fall from high places. Did Mark commit suicide? Or was he pushed? Matthew survived his fall, which happened during a family outing, but is now confined to a wheelchair. Luke is convinced someone has murdered his brother and that he is next in line. The remaining family members, who exhibit an imaginative range of sociopathic tendencies, are steadfastly uncooperative and, in the case of the father, openly hostile. Shanahan is a terrific character, feisty, even noble, but he is ill-served in this choppy, improbable plot; not even the sharp exchanges he has with Maureen and others can save this entry. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.