Alex Rasmussen Mysteries

Amiable, wisecracking Alex Rasmussen was first introduced--to great acclaim--in The Heaven Stone, which won the PWA/St. Martin's Best First Private Eye Novel Contest, and was also named one of the best mysteries of the year by the Providence Journal-Bulletin. Now ghosts from the past and a murderous Halloween haunt his second case. A former cop gone private, Rasmussen makes a living in the decaying New England mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell is also the hometown of Good Night Show host Jerry Corbin, whose career has started to slump in recent years. Corbin and his entourage have come to town to film the pilot episode for a new series designed to boost his sagging star quotient and rescue his ratings. Unfortunately, someone's been sending Corbin hate mail, and an off-the-record investigation is in order. Enter Rasmussen, whose familiarity with TV consists of whatever's on the set in his local bar between sporting events. He's game for the job, though, and soon finds himself one of the insiders in Corbin's camp. Digging into Corbin's life to find out who wants to destroy him, Rasmussen learns that there are old secrets someone wants kept and old grudges someone wants satisfied. Corbin may have been on the fringes of these events, but now he has become the prime target.

Winner of the 1993 PWA/St. Martin's Press Best First Private Eye Novel contest, The Heaven Stone introduces a fresh voice in author David Daniel and a likable new protagonist in Alex Rasmussen, ex-cop turned private investigator, who is drawn into the world Lowell, Massachusetts's, Cambodian refugee community. The only member of his family to escape the killing fields of Cambodia, Bhuntan Tran wound up in the decaying factory town of Lowell. Working two menial jobs (although he held a Ph.D), Tran was well on his way to achieving the American dream when he was shot, execution-style, in his own home. The police are convinced the killing was drug-related and aren't too concerned with a solution. An attractive Chinese-American social worker refuses to accept so easy an answer and commissions Rasmussen to dig out the real story. Against the background of an industrial town where new immigrants are clashing with the long-settled Yankee population, Rasmussen's investigation opens up not only dark links to the victim's past but old wounds of the detective's own.

Private investigator Alex Rasmussen has loved carnivals since he was a boy, and what better way to enjoy one as a grown man than with a lovely woman at his side? As he and his date stroll along the midway, playing games of chance, the soft September night is torn by a scream. Rasmussen rushes to a nearby field to find a woman's body in the weeds. One of the carnival workers---a man with trouble in his past and a motive for murder---is arrested and charged with the crime. The lawyer hired to defend him retains Rasmussen to investigate. The police are convinced they have a clear-cut case, but as Alex probes, he finds a trail as bewildering as a funhouse mirror maze. An outsider to the close-knit "carnies," and shunned by the police department he once served, Rasmussen faces a client who refuses to talk, gangsters looking to exploit the carnival's troubles, a mob of citizens bent on rough justice, and an elusive killer who seems to anticipate Alex's every move. When the investigation points to crooked cops, the defending lawyer abandons the case. Wisdom says Rasmussen should do likewise, but staying on has become a matter of honor. As a woman tells him, "We all end up in the graveyard, flying the marble kite." The only question now is: When? In the old city of Lowell (once the textile capital of America, now a husk of run-down mills), the streets have never been meaner. Beyond the flickering lights and the bright surfaces lies a shadow world where betrayal, deception, and violent death await.

In David Daniel's Goofy Foot, private investigator Alex Rasmussen, embarking on a rather routine search for a missing teenager, finds himself in cold water that couldn't be hotter, as the simple task balloons into a case of murderous surfers and a heart-stopping search for a killer. Kirkus Reviews raves, "The characters are painfully human, the dialogue sharp without being over the top, and the small-town ambience dead-on."