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Grounded in the heat of today's terror warnings, Domenic Stansberry brings back to life a cold case of the 1960s in his book, THE ANCIENT RAIN. The title, taken from a real poem by San Francisco poet Bob Kaufman, like so much of Stansberry's writing, is imbued with the spirit of not only San Francisco history, but its contemporary flavor as well. For anyone familiar with the city and, in particular, the area of North Beach, Stansberry perfectly captures its essence. The story begins when Dante Mancuso, a former San Francisco cop turned private eye, is contacted by his colleague Bill Owens as he is about to be arrested for a crime that happened more than 30 years ago. One ordinary day, PI Owens is driving his kids to school while his wife is in Chicago, when he is pulled over and arrested for a bank robbery carried out by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) back in the late 1960s. With few others to turn to, he calls on colleague Dante Mancuso, reassured that PI Mancuso will know how to help his kids and himself out of this sticky situation. Radical politics runs deep, and at a fundraising event for Bill Owens’s legal bills (as he fights the urban terrorism charges), it turns out that some of the San Francisco heavy hitters are lined up to help support Owens (for their own selfish reasons). Mancuso continues to follow the leads, but he has more questions than answers about this case, particularly when the fund-raiser goes very, very wrong. To gain a real understanding of just what happened in the bank robbery more than 30 years ago, PI Mancuso must retrace the original investigation into the heart of San Francisco's old radical politics. There are some who want justice for the crime, some who want to use it for their own ends, and some who never want the issue to resurface again, and are willing to pay any price to keep the secrets of the case hidden. All this, combined with the setting of the aging Italian neighborhood of North Beach, make this a perfect noir thriller for the present time. Stansberry is able to use these both--the feel of contemporary San Francisco and of the city of the 1960s--to brilliant effect in THE ANCIENT RAIN. He creates a moody atmosphere with plenty of unanswered questions and no perfect answers, even as he slowly reveals the secrets of this razor sharp narrative. Stansberry is an Edgar Award winner, and it shows in his writing here.
Reviewed by Christine Zibas, March 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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