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It is the evening of 6th August, 1930 and Joseph Force Crater, recently appointed judge to The New York State Supreme Court, leaves a restaurant with a man and a woman. He says goodbye, gets into a taxi and is never seen again. Twenty-five years later a private detective is asked to investigate the disappearance. Judge Crater actually did exist and he did disappear on a summer's evening in New York. In spite of a huge manhunt that continued for years, the mystery has never been solved, and the missing persons file was closed in 1979. Quinn makes use of the outstanding police files and a memoir written by Crater's wife to construct a 'what if?' scenario that is never anything less than thoroughly plausible. Fintan Dunne is a retired detective, having sold his very successful agency to a bigger rival and made his fortune in the process. He and his wife, Roberta, have moved to Florida but, although he won't admit it to himself, he is bored and when an old acquaintance from his army days asks him to carry out an investigation he is secretly glad to accept. He has the reputation of being a 'lucky' detective and when he finds out that he is being asked to solve the riddle of Judge Crater he realizes he will need every ounce of that luck. There appears to be a certain casualness in the way Dunne proceeds and without careful reading, it would be possible to miss the clues that are provided, There are two reason for this. The first is that Dunne himself is such a flawed human being that his own story is as interesting as the case in which he is involved. Secondly, Quinn demonstrates a natural sympathy towards people who wouldn't always attract it and is prepared to spend time developing them. For example, the account of the disappearance given by Stella Crater, the judge's wife, so readily dismissed by the police, is taken seriously by Dunne, even though it is clear to him that she is quite unable to see her husband in his true colours. Dunne always tries to be aware of and to make allowance for the weaknesses of others and when he finally interviews her he does so with a courtesy she had not previously been shown. Quinn is never too busy constructing his plot to forget that it will be made more believable if it contains credible characters. The beautiful career girl, Nan, and the world-weary Mulholland, for example, are very well drawn, as are even the minor characters. As the book progresses, so does the pace of the investigation and revelations come thick and fast towards the end, but always convincingly. The truth - or at least Quinn's truth - when it comes, seems to follow naturally from the events described. What Quinn also does – and this helps the novel enormously – is to provide different visions of New York. The references to people like Babe Ruth, Mae West and Eddie Cantor from the thirties give way to Marlon Brando and James Dean from the fifties. Similarly, the details of the journeys to different parts of New York and mention of the now vanished 'El' enable the reader to visualize the city and to place himself in it. One of the minor characters describes how, after Wall Street went bust, the golden age of Broadway, which is so important in this story, went with it. This sense of time passing lends the book an atmosphere that makes it wholly convincing. § Arnold Taylor is a retired Examinations Board Officer, amateur writer and even more amateur bridge player.
Reviewed by Arnold Taylor, November 2011
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