The Last Dark Place (Abe Lieberman Mystery Series, #8)

From Publishers Weekly
Edgar-winner Kaminsky's eighth Abe Lieberman mystery (after 2002's Not Quite Kosher) gets off to a dramatic start. After a prologue in which a gunman confronts a young Lieberman in the middle of a morning prayer service in 1969, the action flashes forward 33 years to find the sardonic 60-something Chicago cop handcuffed to the same gunman, a professional assassin facing extradition back to the Windy City. When an unassuming elderly janitor shocks the veteran lawman by gunning down the assassin in the airport, Lieberman takes on the thankless task of identifying the person who ordered the hit. As that inquiry proceeds, Lieberman tries to defuse a Latin-Asian gang war. Meanwhile, Lieberman's Irish partner, Bill Hanrahan, juggles a rape case and a stalker who's targeting his pregnant wife. Long on vigilante justice, the book succeeds more as a character study than as a whodunit, though the resolution of the sexual-assault inquiry does contain a decent twist. The confluence of the plot threads might strike some as far-fetched, but Kaminsky's sympathetic hero and his believable family relationships make this an entertaining crime novel that should send new readers in search of its predecessors. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
The eighth entry in Kaminsky's Abe Lieberman series about two embattled North Side Chicago cops should delight fans but confuse and frustrate newcomers. Fans of Kaminsky's work in other series (Toby Peters, Inspector Rostnikov, Lew Fonesca) will find him a tight-lipped guide here. There is barely any backstory about the two cops, one Irish (Hanrahan), one Jewish (Lieberman), or their lives, and much depends on backstory in this series. But for the Lieberman true believers, this installment is rich in conflict and atmosphere. Lieberman has been sent to Yuma, Arizona, for the extradition of a Mob hitman, who himself gets whacked while handcuffed to Lieberman at the airport. On the home front, partner Hanrahan and an insufferable substitute partner are trying to track down youths who practice assault and battery, most notably on the wife of an up-and-coming Chicago cop. It's great to see the growth of these two characters and their relationship throughout the series, but anyone trying to start the series by leaping onto this moving sidewalk is sure to stumble. For fans only. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
One of Stuart M. Kaminsky's most memorable characters, Abe Lieberman is a veteran detective who uses his head and heart more than his gun. Lieberman loves what he does and this takes a toll as his commitment to what is right is sorely tested every day on the mean streets of Chicago. As a moral man, he is sometimes faced with uncomfortable ethical choices in order to see that justice--rather than the letter of the law-is meted out.

With The Last Dark Place, Lieberman and his Irish partner Bill Hanrahan, known on the streets as the Rabbi and the Priest, have their hands full with dark matters both professional and personal.

Lieberman goes to Arizona on an extradition case to pick up a mob enforcer that goes horribly awry when the man he is slated to bring back is gunned down at the airport. He comes back from this disaster determined to find out who arranged the hit, and explain to his superiors just how he could have let this happen on his watch.

And there's the little matter of pulling off Lieberman's grandson's bar mitzvah, which threatens to bankrupt him.

While Lieberman is away, Hanrahan has his hands full. Coupled with a temporary partner who is racist, sexist and a general bane of human existence, Hanrahan has to deal with a rape case involving the young wife of a fellow police officer. Hanrahan must race to find the culprits because he knows homicidal rage when he sees it and knows that it is only a matter of time before the officer takes the law into his own hands.

And then there's a young man who dreams of being a star...or killing one to get the notoriety.





About the Author
Stuart M. Kaminsky is the Edgar Award-winning author of the critically acclaimed Lew Fonesca, Inspector Rostnikov, and Abe Lieberman mystery series. He lives with his family in Sarasota, Florida.



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Murder, rape, gang warfare, and his grandson's bar mitzvah: it's another busy week for Chicago cop Abe Lieberman (Not Quite Kosher, 2002, etc.). A short-story prologue-the 1969 invasion of Temple Mir Shavot's morning minyan by a gunman bent on killing newly minted Det. Lieberman-sets the stage for Lieberman's trip to Yuma to retrieve the gunman, 30 years older but a lot less wise than the cop he's cuffed to. When the gunman is killed, the local law is all over the shooter, but it isn't so easy to figure out who hired him. Nor is it any easier, once Abe is back home, to track down the three punks who assaulted the wife of Det. Sgt. Hugh Morton, a decorated black hero cop, before smart, determined Morton catches up with them himself; or to broker a peace between Emiliano Del Sol and the volatile Twin Dragons of Chinatown; or to prevent mild-mannered sign painter Wayne Czerbiak from gunning down world-famous country-and-western singer Lee Cole Carter in search of his own 15 minutes of fame. Toughest of all, however, may be the problem faced by his partner Bill Hanrahan's Chinese bride Iris: her cousin, a Falun Gong fanatic, thinks her pregnancy scandalous and won't quit harassing her no matter who threatens him. Kaminsky packs Abe's latest procedural almost too generously with subplots, and then provides most of them a teasing, sometimes heartrending extra kick before calling it a day.


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