DOMENIC STANSBERRY

Edgar nominee: Best Novel 1999

“ Superb... Stansberry has done it again with this gut-wrenching tale of doomed lovers in San Francisco’s North Beach.” Booklist

“Stansberry does it with originality, through the freshness of his imagery and the lyricism of his lament .” New York Times

"An intriguing picture of Italian fascist activity in San Francisco during World War II.... Stansberry blends his ingredients with a definite panache." Publishers Weekly

From Booklist:

“In an era when ersatz noir has become fashionable, the real thing often goes unappreciated. Take Domenic Stansberry, whose 1987 novel The Spoiler, a superb baseball mystery, languishes out of print, its vision of burned-out lives too raw to be marketable. Now Stansberry has done it again with this gut-wrenching tale of doomed lovers in San Francisco's North Beach. Noir heroes are always doomed: the wrong guy meeting the wrong girl in the wrong world. So it is for failed lawyer Niccolo Jones, who loves his brother's wife and lets that love fester as he watches his Italian neighborhood give way to Chinese immigrants, tourists, and yuppies. Then Nick's brother is murdered, and he finds himself investigating a neighborhood scandal that goes back to Mussolini. Like a James M. Cain hero, Nick knows inevitability when he smells it, and he follows the trail like a bloodhound. Stansberry understands the way neighborhoods and families can imprison as they nurture, and he tells Nick's story in the hard-edged prose it demands. Straight noir, no chaser.” Reviewed by Bill Ott


From Salon.com:

"A murder mystery that's creepily convincing in its plot, which concernslingering traces of fascism in San Francisco's North Beach; completelyconvincing about the energy of sexual obsession that drives the plot, and,.. utterly suggestive about the way immigrants lose their freedom as Americans when the hyphen drops away."