Day of Wrath

Harry Stoner Mystery #4

by Jonathan Valin

Sheltered but precocious teenager Robbie Segal has run away from her home, a small brick house on an unexceptional street. Her desperate mother has asked PI Harry Stoner to find her. What begins as an ordinary missing-persons case - a case that should be settled without any violence at all - suddenly changes in an impossibly terrifying way. Now Harry is on the trail of a shockingly brutal act of murder, because it might lead him to a runaway girl, because it had become part of the job, because something deep and indelible inside him simply has to.

Genres: Mystery, Detective

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Jonathan Valin is an American mystery author best known for the Harry Stoner detective series. He won the Shamus Award for best mystery novel of 1989. After writing eleven Harry Stoner novels over a 14-year period, he took a break from mystery writing to help found Fi, a magazine of music criticism. He now works as an editor and reviewer for magazines.

He is an alumnus of the University of Chicago and lived there for many years.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this fourth of the eleven Harry Stoner adventures, our Cincinnati detective is hired by mother Mildred Segal to find her wandering fourteen-year-old daughter Robbie. Stoner doesn’t like Mildred much—her ferocious, defensive lower-middle-class respectability reminds him too much of the neighborhood where he grew up—but he takes the case anyway. Soon he finds out a neighborhood boy who “worships” Robbie—a budding guitar player and song writer by the name of Bobby Caldwell—seems to be missing too. He doesn’t have much else to go on—except for one enigmatic photograph—until he discovers a bloody crime scene that changes everything.

I loved the Stoner mysteries unreservedly when I first read them thirty-odd years ago, but now that I’ve re-read the first four, I do have a few reservations. I still love the great Cincinnati atmosphere that attracted the homesick Cincinnati native in me then, but the writing itself occasionally gives me pause. Jonathan Valin writes with well, with both energy and style, but sometimes the writing seems too literary—I almost said “too good”—for a hard-edged detective novel. And therefore not “too good,” no, not good enough.

Here’s an example. It is an artistic flourish near the conclusion of the third chapter from the end, and therefore not typical at all. Still, it will show you what I’m talking about:

I thought about Bobby Caldwell and Robbie. Thought that their disparate stories were coming to an end—that, like an author, I was adding my own life to theirs. And the story was love—nothing more. How it got lost behind that gateposts; how it got hidden in the mazy front yards of Eastlawn drive; how it boiled away in a high, handsome Mt. Adams penthouse, where no one had though to turn the fire off. That night, the world seemed full of love’s failures. Men and women driven by a relentless, inexplicable urge to destroy the grounds of their happiness—running from all charity and comfort, as if the charity itself was a burden and the comfort a baseless lie. And I counted myself among them. For a lot of reasons.

See what I mean? The prose is accomplished, deeply-felt, compassionate. The Cincinnati references—to Eastlawn and Mt. Adams—are spot on. And that phrase “hidden in the mazy front yards” is nice. Still, the whole thing seems flowery, self-conscious: words like “inexplicable,” “grounds” (in the sense of basis), and that cutesy meta-metaphor: “like an author, I was adding my own life to theirs.”

Then again, right after this, in the very next chapter, comes a violent, expertly-staged shoot-out. Powerful, exciting, as good as they come. So there’s that.

I guess I’ll be reading Stoner’s fifih adventure, Natural Causes.

[Ritch Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Harry Stoner mysteries are pretty enjoyable. HE is a writer with a good grasp of the city of Cincinnati. HE gives you a snapshot of the city over 50 years ago that still feels relevant to how it is now. Harry is on the trail of a runaway teen girl meeting colorful characters and flitting through observations. I am never quite sure how I will like the story once I read the premise, but by the end, I am usually fully invested in making sure Harry gets his man. Jonathan Valin knows how to spin a tale and I find myself waiting for Harry to find the right clue that gets him where he needs to go. Harry is a pretty good protagonist, and his mysteries have a few twists and turns that help you stay locked in. I recommend this series if you are looking for a solidly written mystery.

Valin has a way of spelling out the action, and getting you invested in Harry, that I am beginning to love, and knowing that the series doesn't go on forever, I am not looking forward to my last Harry Stoner mystery.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Stoner is the classic PI, a loner who loves his scotch and his hometown of Cincinnati. He gives the reader a grand tour and history of the city. Both good and bad parts of town. This is becoming one of my favorite hard-boiled series from the '80's.

[John Marr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice little California-style PI novel transplanted to Cincinnati. Unfortunately, Valin demonstrates that he knows nothing about music and little about 1982, using tropes that were trite in 1976. And in the ridiculous climax is woefully out of place. Pperhaps Valin is trying to poach on Don Pendelton's readership?

[Cindy B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gory tale, well written and well read in audio version.