Vanishing Smile - Softcover

Earl Emerson's acclaimed series about Seattle private investigator Thomas Black is much beloved by readers and critics. And with justification. (These novels, running the gamut from THE RAINY CITY to the just-issued CATFISH CAF, are among my all-time favorite detective tales, and I'm not just saying that because I'm Earl's editor.) But I don't know any other crime novelist who amasses such fervent praise from his peers. It would be a crime to call Earl Emerson merely a "writer's writer." But there sure are a lot of talented authors who revere him. To wit . . .

Aaron Elkins: "In every book he tries something new, and he always comes up a winner. In the best tradition of American crime fiction, Emerson is a master of witty dialogue; clever, complex plotting; and lucid, meaty prose."

Robert Crais: "Earl Emerson writes with the richness and grace of a poet, evincing a quality of phrase and nuance that elevates the genre."

Ann Rule: "Earl Emerson and Thomas Black only get better and better! Earl Emerson has taken his place in the rarefied air of the best of the best!"

'Nuff said.

--Joe Blades, Associate Publisher

In his eighth adventure (following The Portland Laugher), Seattle PI Thomas Black accompanies lawyer Kathy Birchfield to a mysterious meeting with a client in the mountains on a rainy night. Birchfield's car strikes a pedestrian who seems to materialize out of nowhere. The victim is identified as Birchfield's client, a 71-year-old amateur gumshoe named Marian Wright. Too much about the "accident" looks suspicious to Black, especially when he learns that Wright was hounding several locals with allegations about their sexual histories. The case leads to a web of past lovers who may or may not be linked to a young woman dying of AIDS. Black's investigation is complicated by his love for Kathy, whose fiance he accidentally shot to death several months earlier, and by the return to town of his own wayward father. These relationships show a vulnerable side of the tough, resourceful Black, but they also sometimes slow down the story. Although it takes a chart to keep the characters and their couplings straight, Shamus-winner Emerson wraps them up credibly and does so with gritty panache.
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