Product Description

Lew Fonesca is a guy just trying to get along. When his wife died in a senseless auto wreck, he got up and left his old life--and when his car gave out in sunny Sarasota, Florida, he stayed. He takes small process-serving gigs and various odd jobs helping people out, and he tries, although maybe not as hard as he should, to fix the gaping hole in his heart.

But for a man who just wants to ease through life without any complications, Lew has a pretty full plate. The shrink that Lew's been seeing for more than a year wants him to finally dump all the grief that he's carrying around so he can have more than a half-life. And Sally, the pretty single mom and social worker who has helped Lew in the past, wants to deepen their friendship. On top of that, a local minister asks him to find a town council member who has gone missing just before a crucial vote that could ruin a struggling community, and a distraught father comes to Lew to track down his wife and two kids, whom Lew suspects ran off with the man's best friend.

When people start showing up dead, Lew knows he's in way over his head--and this time he may not be able make it all come out okay.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #507059 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-12
• Released on: 2004-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.com Review
Like Ross Macdonald's empathic private eye, Lew Archer, Stuart M. Kaminsky's Lew Fonesca is well acquainted with psychological hardships. Only in Fonesca's case, the problems are mostly his own, rather than his clients'. His wife's unsolved car-accident death in Chicago several years ago left him clinically depressed. "Close to suicidal a few times," he explains in Midnight Pass, "but my therapist assures me I’m not psychotic." It also led to Fonesca's escape to sunny Sarasota, Florida. Nowadays, when he isn't watching old movies or otherwise trying to hide away from the world, he takes on process-serving assignments as well as investigative work for people with daunting troubles of their own.

This includes people such as the Reverend Fernando Wilkins, who in this third Fonesca outing (after Vengeance and Retribution) hires the outwardly unremarkable, "poor but honest" Italian sleuth to locate a dying county councilman, William Trasker, who's vanished just prior to a decisive vote on reopening a controversial waterway. Did Trasker hie off for a last-breath fling, leaving his former movie-star wife behind? Or was he kidnapped for political purposes--perhaps by shady landowner and baseball fanatic Kevin Hoffman, a man with a hefty financial stake in that waterway's future? Distracted by a coterie of eccentric secondary players (including a homeless gent, intent on remaking himself as a dance instructor), and under the care of a shrink who believes he can overcome his dolorousness with joke-telling (a story line that Kaminsky plumbs for wonderfully dry comedic effect), Fonesca hardly seems like the sort one would turn to in a crisis. Yet he manages in Midnight Pass not only to unearth Trasker, but to help a wayward wife charged with murdering her lover and save himself from being ventilated by a sniper with atrocious aim.

The story contains some too-convenient turns, such as an assault on Fonesca at the site of the disputed waterway. But Kaminsky is generally a shrewd plotter, his fiction striking a fine balance between action, humor and the quirkiest of characterizations. This series' despondent protagonist might be the only one not entertained by the results. --J. Kingston Pierce

From Publishers Weekly
The prolific Kaminsky cleverly uses Lew Fonesca's struggle to reclaim his own life as a counterpoint to his clients' problems in the third novel (after 2001's Retribution) to star the emotionally wounded sleuth, who's retreated to Sarasota, Fla., in the wake of his wife's death in a hit-and-run car accident in Chicago. Fonesca's therapist, Ann Horowitz, encourages him to face the deep, nearly crippling depression that keeps him in limbo. Sporadic work as a process server helps to pay the rent. The trouble starts with an upcoming proposal in the Sarasota City Council to reopen Midnight Pass between two small islands. Councilman Rev. Fernando Wilkens persuades Fonesca to locate a missing colleague for the decisive vote, a mission that turns fatal. Meanwhile, a frantic man begs him to find his missing wife and children. For a man studiously avoiding social contact, Fonesca's almost hit overload, but a strong sense of fairness keeps him from hiding out and watching old movies. Friends Flo Zink, a big-hearted recovering alcoholic; social worker Sally Porovsky, who wants to be more than just a friend; and Ames McKinney, the older gentleman riding backup, draw him out, inch by inch. Kaminsky's decent, damaged man brings closure for his clients and perhaps solace for himself. He's got a long way to go, which is great news for eager readers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Kaminsky's newest detective hero (following Depression-era Hollywood gumshoe Toby Peters, Russian inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, and Chicago cop Abe Lieberman) is almost paralyzed by grief over the death of his wife. He leaves his job as a researcher with the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and consciously seeks to bury himself in a Florida town where he knows no one and where his human contact is limited to those he tracks down as a process server. If this were a writing contest to come up with "Most Unlikely Detective," Kaminsky's latest protagonist would win hands down. Incredibly, though, the result is a psychologically acute and fast-moving crime series. The Lew Fonesca mysteries (this is the third) interweave the hero's pared-down existence with characters who are desperately seeking, or desperately hiding, from others. This time out, Fonesca is on two trails: a husband wants him to find his wife, his kids, and her new boyfriend at Disneyworld, and a high-powered Sarasota politician needs him to find another politician, whose vote he needs to block the reopening of Midnight Pass. This issue pits profitmongers against environmentalists in a volatile, murderous mix. Kaminsky confines the action to five days and three murders in a tour de force of economical plotting. Series readers will appreciate the ways in which Fonesca, who has sworn off life, keeps getting drawn back--in ways that hint at his salvation. A wryly written parable set in an old-time detective context. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Fonesca's Fantastic!
Lew Fonesca is my favorite fiction character, bar none. Kaminsky has created a character who perfectly balances today's angst with yesterday's 'work, don't think' ethics. He struggles with his depression emotionally, while doing the right things physically. He hides in old movies and exercising, but is able to put those indulgences aside when needed.

The mystery is solid in Midnight Pass, as in all Kaminsky books. But it's the character development of Lew Fonesca that offers several laugh-out-loud moments, and a few tears to be wiped away. The book is somewhat dark, but not in an angst-ridden way. The humor is subtle and intelligent. A top-notch book in an excellent series.

Lew's not macho, but he gets the job done.
The hero in Stuart Kaminsky's latest book, "Midnight Pass," is Lew Fonesca. Lew is a sad sack who has been chronically depressed since his wife was killed in a hit and run accident. To make ends meet, Lew works as process server in Sarasota, Florida. He does not look forward to the future, which he is positive will be bleak. He sports a well-worn Chicago Cubs cap on his balding head, and he has little use for material possessions. His friends are an odd assortment of people, quite a few of whom live on the fringes of society.

What makes this seemingly unprepossessing man worth caring about? First of all, Lew has a soft and compassionate nature. He always offers assistance to those who have been battered by life, including Adele, a young unwed mother, Flo, a recovering alcoholic, and Digger, a homeless man. In addition, although Lew is not a licensed private investigator, he is an excellent sleuth. In "Midnight Pass," Lew is hired to track down a missing wife for her distraught husband. Lew also attempts to give a dying cancer patient the opportunity to fulfill his final wish.

Kaminsky tells his story in a spare, quirky, and whimsical way. He presents an off-the-wall cast of characters who say outrageous things with a straight face. Lew's sessions with his deadpan psychologist, Ann Horowitz, are both funny and poignant. Although the mystery in "Midnight Pass" is engrossing enough, it is fairly conventional. However, Kaminsky's colorful characters and his engaging writing style will have readers clamoring for more adventures with the inimitable Lew Fonesca.

Fonesca is no Rostnikov
After hugely enjoying all of the P. P. Rostnikov novels, this was a great disappointment. I could never muster much interest or empathy toward any of the characters, most of whom seemed to be pasteboard cut-outs. The book never elicited the can't-put-it-down absorbtion of Kaminsky's Russian tales or most of the books of Michael Connelly, Archer Mayor, Peter Robinson, Colin Dexter, or John Harvey.

One of the main strengths of the Rostnikov stories was their exotic and convincing Russian setting. Florida culture and the marginal characters in this book were all too familiar to add interest to the tale.