Word: shea
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...meet his girlfriend, the judge, who wears a .38 on the bench and at the age of 36 insists on living at home with her over-protective father, Lee, his beautiful ex-wife, also remains a force in Shea's life, especially since she alone was present when their adopted and much loved daughter. Cat, was killed by a terrorist's bomb...
...sins of the father are visited on the son: Shea, Jr. gets involved in the same sort of shady dealing that did in Shea, Sr., and the violent crimes of the client return to haunt the lawyer. Through the convoluted plot, threads weave and re-weave until every action seems to touch every character, from poor Shea to Harriet Dawson, a sympathetic child-murderer. Fate hangs over everyone's life like the faith the protagonist constantly tries to deny...
...hard-boiled detective novels, with violent action, illicit sex and a tender-hearted toughie for its hero. But Dunne's treatment of these people remains too sensitive and perceptive for this book to be classified in that genre. As the voice shifts from omniscient narration to eavesdrop on Shea's thoughts and colorful dialogue. Dunne makes us painfully aware of his hero's growing depression as he begins to believe that he is trapped--by what his girlfriend labels the self-fulfilling prophecies of despair and his priest would call the wrath of a vengeful...
Whatever it is that envelops Shea, the magic of Dunne's clean, almost crisp, prose captures the reader. This book ends much too quickly...
Although no plans for filming Dutch Shea, Jr. loom on the immediate horizon, such an action-filled novel would appear a good basis for a detective film. But while Dunne obviously enjoys working on screenplays, he worries that his novels lose much in the transition from print to film. The process involves boiling a 300-plus page novel down to about 120 pages for almost two hours of film: to do this the author must simplify plot lines, remove minor characters and trust in his actors' abilities to convey the emotions written into the novel. The result may be radically...