Shallow Graves

John Francis Cuddy #7

by Jeremiah Healy

When nineteen-year-old Amerasian model Mau Tim is found dead after a bungled burglary, private eye John Cuddy investigates and discovers that Tim's agency had taken out a hefty insurance policy on the cover girl prior to her death.

Genres: Mystery

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

aka 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

Reviews

[John Culuris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Healy has always been an entertaining read. There’s nothing great here but I have yet to encounter anything bad in the John Francis Cuddy books. Still happy to keep working my way through the series.

[David Freas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always like Healy’s John Francis Cuddy short stories in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and the books in the Cuddy series. This book is as good as the rest.

Shallow Graves, the 7th in the Cuddy series, shows Healy at the peak of his talent. The story is twisty and fresh and Healy has Cuddy slowly amass the clues (instead of having them fall into his lap in a lump 90% through the story) that lead to the resolution of the murder of a young model.

It's a bit refreshing, too, to read a story where everyone doesn’t have a cell phone and a car phone is a novelty.

There were, sadly, a ton of production errors in this e-book – something that by now should be a thing of the past, especially in a book first published in 1992, when all publishers employed proofreaders and copy editors to make sure such goofs didn’t happen. And Amazon continues its unique ability to tell me a book is so many pages long but not number those pages in the e-book.

There are 13 Cuddy novels, and I only have two more to read. I wish there were 30 more but sadly Mr. Healy left us 5 years ago, so there will be no more. And that’s a loss for mystery readers everywhere

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good detective yarn set in Boston. Location was fun and the "hero" was an insurance investigator. Jumped into the world of modeling and the Boston mob. Well crafted tale.

[M_latimer]

Fairly interesting read. Old paperback.