In the Shadow of the Arch

Joe Keough Mystery #2

by Robert J. Randisi

Brooklyn-born Detective Joe Keough, arriving for a new job in St. Louis, quickly becomes drawn into two cases--one involving a little boy--and a trail of abductions and murder. By the author of Blood on the Arch. Reprint.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Suspense, Action

367 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 1997

About the author

Robert Joseph Randisi was a prolific American author, editor, and screenwriter, best known for his work in detective and Western fiction. He wrote over 650 books, including The Gunsmith series under the pen name J.R. Roberts, and edited more than 30 anthologies. A co-founder of Mystery Scene magazine, the American Crime Writers League, and Western Fictioneers, he also established The Private Eye Writers of America and created the Shamus Award. Randisi collaborated on novels with Eileen Davidson and Vince Van Patten, and created memorable characters such as Miles Jacoby, Joe Keough, and The Rat Pack. He received multiple lifetime achievement awards and the John Seigenthaler Humanitarian Award.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

After his police career in New York is ruined, Joe Keough moves to Saint Louis, Missouri, and gets a job with the Richmond Heights PD. An hour into his first day, a three year old boy walks into the police station, leaving a trail of bloody footprints. But he connected to the string of murder-kidnappings all over St. Louis count?

I had this book pushed on me several minutes after I was told Randisi would be a guest on The Review Board in coming weeks. So far, not impressed.

In the Shadow of the Arch had a lot of strikes against it going in. First off, I wasn't really keen on reading it. Secondly, it features a serial killer. These facts didn't consciously influence my opinion of the book but they probably didn't help.

Looks like I'm going to attempt the compliment sandwich approach to this review to lessen the blow. I loved a lot of the St. Louis details worked into the story. To me, New York is the city of skyscrapers I see on TV and two airports I've spent some time in. St. Louis is nearly my back yard so I was thrilled with the authenticity of cops calling the The West County Mall "The Bird Mall," and it was twelve kinds of awesome when Keough and Steinbach ate at Gingham's, the greasy spoon I used to eat at all hours of the night after seeing bands in dive bars.

Unfortunately, getting St. Louis cultural references was most of my enjoyment. First off, while the book was first published in 1998, the internet and cellphones are nonexistent. Not only that, wives are constantly deferring to their husbands, making this book feel like it took place in the late 1950's. Some of the St. Louis references also seemed a little off but the good far outweighed the bad on that score.

Those gripes, however, paled in comparison to Keough and the various St. Louis police departments. Apparently, despite St. Louis being nicknamed Murder City because of the crime rate, the STLPD ran around like a bunch of monkeys trying to fuck a football until supercop Keough took charge. Jackson makes incredible leaps of logic to figure out who the killer was before even Keough but he is killed before we ever get to find out how he did it! Keough was kind of an asshole but it didn't annoy me as much as his "New York Attitude" mentioned once every other page.

I said I was doing the compliment sandwich so I guess the other piece of bread will be it was a pretty engaging read despite the annoyances. I'll give Randisi the benefit of the doubt and not completely write him off just yet. Two out of five stars.

[audrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

By the golden be-winged hairdo of JM J Bullock, what is this nonsense?

Joe Keough (nope, I don't know how to pronounce it either except that at one point a character calls him "Keyhole") is a police detective who moves from NEW YORK City to St. Louis after a case that's either disastrous or spectacular but never actually explained. NEW YORK is in capitals there because the author never lets you go more than a couple chapters without mentioning Keough's NEW YORK attitude.

Keough yaws between being defensive about his NEW YORK attitude and asking others if they can tell he has a NEW YORK attitude. This would normally get in the way of police work except that Keough and his comrades don't do all that much policing. Seriously. A 3-year-old boy wanders into the station trailing blood, Keough traces it back to a house that looks like a blood bank exploded and then, after canvassing some neighbors and turning on the toddler's mother's vibrator (seriously), Keough...goes home.

As does the dramatic tension.

There then follows some of the most crap detecting I have ever read: the toddler's parents are missing and there's blood everywhere, so Keough takes a phone book home, goes out for a nice dinner, wonders how he's going to track down the toddler to interview him again, then goes to bed. The next morning, Keough calls two numbers in the book and bingo, the second one is the father's place of business. Keough moseys on round to interview everyone there because he suspects the father of wrongdoing.

Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Things Keough does not do:

--look for other relatives
--run down fingerprints taken from the scene
--check to see if either parent has a record or aliases
--any police work that might interfere with dinner

This is largely because despite the book being nominally set in 1998, Keough lives in a magical world sometime during the 1950s, where all women check with their husbands before speaking, reporting crimes, leaving the house; Keogh encounters a magical new children's toy called Legos* ("Keogh had seen commercials, so although they had not been immediately recognizable to him, he did know the name"), and the only conceivable reason for a woman declining to talk to Keough is because she's having an affair. The idea that perhaps Keough has the personality of a broken belt-sander never occurs to him.

And, in a cast of something like two dozen cops and mall security guards, there's exactly one non-white person, but he disappears from the book fairly early on.

In Keough's magical world, everyone -- including his new police captain and the chief of police -- thinks he's awesome and repeatedly tells him so, despite the fact that Keough is a complete dickweed.

In fact, he works at being a dickweed way harder than at solving crimes. To wit:

--First day on the job in a new precinct? Definitely time to debate whether to take other cops aside and criticize their wardrobes. ("Keough decided to wait and see if the men made a habit of dressing this way before he said anything.")

--Second day on the job? Find crumbs on a desk? Go to the men's room and get a wet paper towel** and laboriously wipe them up, then make a note to chastise the crumb-leaver as time allows ("He was going to have to have a talk with his deskmate.").

I mean, it's not like there's a missing couple or a serial killer loose or anything. I mean, Jeesh. Crumbs.

--Keough's not big on listening to people. Like, even cops he works with: "Gardner told Keough his life story, but Keough doubted he'd remember most of it an hour later. He had the habit of tuning people out when they started talking about themselves." Charming. "

--More charming? If you're interviewing a recalcitrant witness: "He wondered how to play this, and decided to scare her. Why let her off easy?"

To be fair, you can write characters who are this big of an a-hole and still tell a great story. It all boils down to why the guy's an a-hole. Does he not listen to people because he's consumed by thoughts of the case? Worried about the toddler? Trying to focus on that one clue he just can't remember? Stalked by personal trauma?

None of these things -- or anything else -- are presented as rationales for Keough's behavior. The closest we get is his, you know, NEW YORK ATTITUDE.

There's a whole psycho-sexual serial killer plot going on but why bother? All you need to know is that Keough solves the whole thing single-handedly while other cops and an FBI agent compliment him on how awesome he is. Which is a good thing, because the plot has so many loopholes that the only way it would ever have been solved is by Keough's magic intuition and personal awesomeness. As he would be the first to tell you.

There's a clue that appears randomly and is never mentioned again (greeting card, anyone?). There's the cop who brings in bagels and mentions he didn't bring donuts because he "doesn't do cliches". Then 100 pages later he brings in donuts, and we have a little ode to the donut sidetrack. There are random POV-switches whenever the author needs them. There is this: "As Keough entered the chief's office the man's head was down, examining something on his desk" ... "He couldn't even think about doing anything with the dark girl." Because she has dark hair, see? So she's the dark girl!

Then there's how women are only evaluated based on attractiveness (which in Keough's 1950s idea depends on whether he thinks they do exercise or not) and, as mentioned, if they're married, they must first consult their husbands before speaking. There's a woman described as being very overweight, "with upper arms that flapped even when she breathed." Which is not actually possible unless she's breathing in a wind tunnel.

And don't get me started on "stripper smell".

In the end the serial killer gets overwhelmed by Keough's awesomeness and just up and confesses, in the least dramatic or exciting foot race in the history of crime fiction (seriously, they walk) and some resolution to the toddler thing that made as little sense as the rest of that subplot, and miraculously, Keough winds up dating a social worker who is presumably bowled over by his NEW YORK attitude or likes belt sanders. All we know is that she exercises and doesn't smell like a stripper.

This book on the other hand, has a particularly pungent aroma...



*What kind of idiot gives Legos to a 3-year-old? Can you say "choking hazard"?

**Is it just me who'd brush them onto the floor and get on with the magic 48-hour window, or the, I don't know, serial killer?

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

a page turner. suspense filled.
I liked the Joe Keough character.
fast paced, easy read. some police procedural/investigative elements.

FYI; . Joe is starting over in St. Louis. this is the 2nd book in the series, and while the writer refers to events in the first book, i wasn't lost. As a reader, i was starting w/a clean slate the same as the protagonist.

i like this writer but i have a hard time finding his mystery books. I'd recommend if you like suspense/thriller cop mysteries that when you come across one of his books, you grab it.

[Brian Steele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Randisi's Curtains Of Blood, a Victorian murder mystery involving Jack The Ripper and Bram Stoker. Excited to try out something in a more contemporary setting by him (the author is famous for his Western novels), I found this book a bit boring.

Dectective Keough is constantly being reminded how he came from New York, and things are different in St. Louis. (The other cops either hate him, or are in awe.) Although we see through the eyes of the killer at times, nothing is ever really explained... and the "climax" is hardly that.

Don't get me wrong - I didn't dislike this book, I guess I just expected something much, much more.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written easy read. I am from St. Louis so I could picture all the places referenced in the book.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great book by an author I had not tried before. I will try to find more especially in this series.

[Lisa Seter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad if you are looking for a serial killer story written for a middle-school aged reader.

[Debbie Greubel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other than getting tires of hearing about his New York attitude on virtually every page, I liked the book.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Young mothers with babies in strollers are being kidnapped while at shopping malls. Detective Joe Keough, newly moved to St. Louis from New York is assigned to the case. I enjoyed reading this as it is nether to violent or bloody. The author seems laid back and so is his detective. Solving the case is intertwined with another one when a little boy is dropped off at the police station in bloody pj's and a blank look on his face. I like the detective and plan on reading the next book about him.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

ithink that tis book was a bit mature,but i have t say te author did a great job espially with using suspense in most of the chapters.plus i look forward to reading another one of his books.

[Karen Welty · Rating 4 out of 5]

very suspense filled!

[Peg Holsapple · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quick summertime murder read...nothing special.

[Kynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a pretty fast read. I liked it a lot but did feel the ending, though sweet, lacked real surprise.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this 15 or so years ago, really enjoyed it and meant to read the others... just forgot what it was called and who wrote it!

[Nancy Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good mystery. A lot of St. Louis references.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: former NY cop Joe Keough moved to St. Louis to get away from the bloodshed. Not possible!