What do you think?
Rate this book
John Francis Cuddy #8
Foursome
Private investigator John Cuddy travels to the woods of Maine where he searches for evidence that will exonerate a man accused of a heinous murder. By the author of Shallow Graves. 15,000 first printing. $10,000 ad/promo.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1993
25 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Jeremiah Healy
74 books20 followersaka Terry Devane
Jeremiah Healy was the creator of the John Francis Cuddy private-investigator series and the author of several legal thrillers. A former sheriff's officer and military police captain, Healy was also a graduate of Rutgers College and the Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Boston before teaching for eighteen years at the New England School of Law. His first novel, BLUNT DARTS, was published in 1984 and introduced Cuddy, the Boston-based private eye who has become Healy¹s best-known character. Moral, honest--and violent, when need-be--Cuddy makes his living solving cases that have fallen through the cracks of the formal judicial system.
Of his thirteen Cuddy novels and two collections of short stories, fifteen have either won or been nominated for the Shamus Award.
www.JeremiahHealy.com
Series:
* John Francis Cuddy
Jeremiah Healy was the creator of the John Francis Cuddy private-investigator series and the author of several legal thrillers. A former sheriff's officer and military police captain, Healy was also a graduate of Rutgers College and the Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Boston before teaching for eighteen years at the New England School of Law. His first novel, BLUNT DARTS, was published in 1984 and introduced Cuddy, the Boston-based private eye who has become Healy¹s best-known character. Moral, honest--and violent, when need-be--Cuddy makes his living solving cases that have fallen through the cracks of the formal judicial system.
Of his thirteen Cuddy novels and two collections of short stories, fifteen have either won or been nominated for the Shamus Award.
www.JeremiahHealy.com
Series:
* John Francis Cuddy
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Read
October 15, 2022.
★ ★ ★ 1/2
Jeremiah Healy’s eighth outing with private detective John Francis Cuddy is what I think of as a “meet the characters” novel. An explanation is in order, I know. Even books overflowing with a large reoccurring cast are still about meeting characters. In Foursome, though, that all we do for more than half the book. Perhaps that’s why Healy opened with a prologue where the reader is allowed to witness the murder of three of the four people for whom the book is titled, and only then does he switch to Cuddy’s first-person narrative. That introductory scene will have to hold us for a while.
I was initially fine with this as it was along the lines of what I had come to expect from this series. I’m far from an expert on Healy’s work as I’ve spread the previous seven books out over several years, but a part of his method seems to involve putting his protagonist--and presumably most of his readership--through unique experiences or into uncommon places: the step-by-step training for a marathon from scratch, for example. Or the firsthand look at the workings of a slaughterhouse because that’s the only place he can meet his source of information. In Foursome the city-bread Cuddy is sent to the more rural, sedate state of Maine, where at the vacation home of two fellow Bostonians the aforementioned murders take place. Two couples, of which both wives and a husband is killed, and the remaining husband stands accused. Cuddy gets to meet the locals: the sheriff, witnesses, everyday people; and experience their way of life. Healy does an excellent job of describing various aspects of Maine’s environment throughout the novel.
The nature of the detective novel often dictates that a good part of the story takes place in the past. The trick is to keep the investigation interesting as the backstory is revealed. That’s why I used the word “initially” above. Once Cuddy returns to Boston to interview the accused’s coworkers at Defense Resource Management, an arms contractor, repetition begins to wear. Very little of past relationships and activities has been revealed. And it is well past the halfway point before Cuddy becomes an active participant in a story that he is telling.
Being worn down does not mean interest cannot be revived. By this point (1993) Jeremiah Healy had been doing this almost ten years. Once Cuddy becomes truly involved, once various characters with conflicting stakes emerge, once personal survival becomes a part of the equation, Healy can display the skills that made him a Shamus award winner. And in fairness, this book was nominated for a Shamus as well. I have to admit that do not see how. A final quarter of quality does not make the whole great. It does, however, make the book worth reading. And continuing with the series is not in question. I got what expected, just not in the ratio I expected. And in the end, that is still the author’s prerogative.
★ ★ ★ 1/2
Jeremiah Healy’s eighth outing with private detective John Francis Cuddy is what I think of as a “meet the characters” novel. An explanation is in order, I know. Even books overflowing with a large reoccurring cast are still about meeting characters. In Foursome, though, that all we do for more than half the book. Perhaps that’s why Healy opened with a prologue where the reader is allowed to witness the murder of three of the four people for whom the book is titled, and only then does he switch to Cuddy’s first-person narrative. That introductory scene will have to hold us for a while.
I was initially fine with this as it was along the lines of what I had come to expect from this series. I’m far from an expert on Healy’s work as I’ve spread the previous seven books out over several years, but a part of his method seems to involve putting his protagonist--and presumably most of his readership--through unique experiences or into uncommon places: the step-by-step training for a marathon from scratch, for example. Or the firsthand look at the workings of a slaughterhouse because that’s the only place he can meet his source of information. In Foursome the city-bread Cuddy is sent to the more rural, sedate state of Maine, where at the vacation home of two fellow Bostonians the aforementioned murders take place. Two couples, of which both wives and a husband is killed, and the remaining husband stands accused. Cuddy gets to meet the locals: the sheriff, witnesses, everyday people; and experience their way of life. Healy does an excellent job of describing various aspects of Maine’s environment throughout the novel.
The nature of the detective novel often dictates that a good part of the story takes place in the past. The trick is to keep the investigation interesting as the backstory is revealed. That’s why I used the word “initially” above. Once Cuddy returns to Boston to interview the accused’s coworkers at Defense Resource Management, an arms contractor, repetition begins to wear. Very little of past relationships and activities has been revealed. And it is well past the halfway point before Cuddy becomes an active participant in a story that he is telling.
Being worn down does not mean interest cannot be revived. By this point (1993) Jeremiah Healy had been doing this almost ten years. Once Cuddy becomes truly involved, once various characters with conflicting stakes emerge, once personal survival becomes a part of the equation, Healy can display the skills that made him a Shamus award winner. And in fairness, this book was nominated for a Shamus as well. I have to admit that do not see how. A final quarter of quality does not make the whole great. It does, however, make the book worth reading. And continuing with the series is not in question. I got what expected, just not in the ratio I expected. And in the end, that is still the author’s prerogative.
May 10, 2017
Super book! Good plot, well written and interesting characters. A Boston private detective, John Cuddy, is hired to go to Maine to try to discover who could have murdered three people from two couples who used to enjoy each other's company. At the beginning of his involvement, Cuddy is sent to meet Steven Shea who has been arrested as the suspected killer, question him and try to figure out who else might have murdered the three. Cuddy is poking into all sorts of criminal affairs and his life is threatened several times. He knows how to handle himself though and can think his way out of bad spots. Although published in 1993 the story is still fascinating, fresh and exciting.
June 28, 2019
Good read.
June 23, 2011
Maine woods setting and Boston PI John Cuddy investigating add up to a reliable entertainment.
Want to read
March 17, 2019Synopsis: when members of the Foursome, a pair of libertine couples, are murdered, Detective Cuddy is hired to scour Maine and Boston.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews