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Harry Stoner Mystery #6
Life's Work
While tracking down a missing football star-turned-murderer, hard-boiled detective Harry Stoner explores the sordid world of drugs among the rough players of Cincinnati's professional football team
- GenresMystery
251 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
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48 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Valin
38 books16 followersJonathan 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.
He is an alumnus of the University of Chicago and lived there for many years.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 6, 2019
This sixth book in Valin’s Harry Stoner series is as good as the fifth, and the fifth is one of my favorite mystery novels of all time. In some ways it is very different from elder brother, for Life’s Work concerns a professional football in Cincinnati, whereas Natural Causes, the earlier book, dealt with the writing and production of a daytime soap opera in Hollywood. Yet each books reveals the shabbiness that lies beneath a glamorous business: the greed and ambition that drives it, the vices that infect it, the characteristic personalities of the talented—and often haunted--men and women who make it what it is. Hollywood is more about cocaine and lies, football more about steroids and rage, but both worlds—when you delve beneath the surface—betray layers of duplicity, violence, and fear.
The whole thing starts as a missing person’s case. Hugh Petrie, CEO of the Cincinnati Cougars, wants Harry Stoner to locate Billy Parks, who didn’t show up for training camp one day and hasn’t been seen since. Soon Stoner teams up—well, sort of—with Billy’s good friend Otto Bluerock, official football has-been and possibly the angriest man alive, to find the missing football star. They tear up the local bars, gyms and jails (well Otto does, anyway) and soon Stoner is enveloped in a bizarre stew of steroid trafficking, prostitution, the abuse of women, and religious fanaticism. Meanwhile, Billy eludes them. But rage and violence are crucial to football, Billy and Otto’s “life’s work,” and Stoner senses that—given the damaged lives he sees around him—murder is just a matter of time.
Read it. It is one of the lost classics of the hard-boiled genre.
August 29, 2010
Great entry in this PI series set in Cincinnati. Harry Stoner is hired by the professional football team in Cincy to find one of their players who has gone AWOL from training camp. Excellent plot with well-rounded, realistic characters.
June 21, 2015
These just get better and better. True "hard boiled" stuff, with some unexpected twists. Hint for living a long life -- Don't sleep with Harry Stoner!
October 22, 2015
3* I liked this audiobook with its sports angle as well as all the action. It's heavy though, themes similar to many books I've listened to lately which have taken me into Ireland. This one gave me glimpses of a different group of people and I enjoyed that too.
January 10, 2020
Another Super Bowl-themed read is “Life’s Work” by Jonathan Valin. Valin created the 11-episode series featuring detective Harry Stoner. This is No. 6 in that series. This one’s set in the 1980’s era in Cincinnati.
Harry is called in by the Cincinnati Cougars to investigate a missing person: their sometimes erratic lineman Billy Parks, who’s not shown up for training camp and no one knows where he is. Harry teams up with Billy’s good friend Otto and off they go, looking for the missing man. Here, again, we find an “underside” of pro football (possibly all pro sports) as Stone’s investigation takes him through steroid trafficking, prostitution, abuse of women, and even religious fanaticism. It’s not enough that simple rage and violence are oftentimes part of the recipe of the sport, it seems.
Billy’s own “habits” include a fondness for physical abuse of women and some cocaine and steroid trafficking. Along the way we meet a wide assortment of characters, including a shady DEA team, a bodybuilder, a con man as a manager, and, of course, as this is a murder mystery, a few dead bodies. Some snappy dialogue helps with the pace, though. Valin’s book gives a giant nod to the “hard-boiled” genre, but probably doesn’t give 21st century readers any information about the NFL and pro sports that we won’t already know.
Harry is called in by the Cincinnati Cougars to investigate a missing person: their sometimes erratic lineman Billy Parks, who’s not shown up for training camp and no one knows where he is. Harry teams up with Billy’s good friend Otto and off they go, looking for the missing man. Here, again, we find an “underside” of pro football (possibly all pro sports) as Stone’s investigation takes him through steroid trafficking, prostitution, abuse of women, and even religious fanaticism. It’s not enough that simple rage and violence are oftentimes part of the recipe of the sport, it seems.
Billy’s own “habits” include a fondness for physical abuse of women and some cocaine and steroid trafficking. Along the way we meet a wide assortment of characters, including a shady DEA team, a bodybuilder, a con man as a manager, and, of course, as this is a murder mystery, a few dead bodies. Some snappy dialogue helps with the pace, though. Valin’s book gives a giant nod to the “hard-boiled” genre, but probably doesn’t give 21st century readers any information about the NFL and pro sports that we won’t already know.
August 1, 2025
I tried. I really did. This was awful. Pick a stereotype or a derogatory name, and you’ll find it within two chapters. I kept going, and when the P.I. paid a possibly underaged girl for more than information, I was out. Not for me. Nope.
July 22, 2021
Another "Harry Stoner" tale, this time in search of a pro football player. Only OK.
August 7, 2022
One of the best '80's/'90's PI series I've found......
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December 22, 2024Harry Stoner Mystery, Book 6
October 7, 2016
LIFE’S WORK by Jonathan Valin…..
A 1980’s era private eye procedural taking place in Cincinnati, dealing with a local NFL Team player who’s gone missing. Harry Stoner is hired to investigate.
The not so simple missing person case of a slightly off kilter lineman, who seems to have a fondness for physical abuse of women, turns into something with overtones of heavy cocaine and steroid trafficking, a shady detective assigned to a DEA task force, a bodybuilder, scam artist manager and finally a couple of grisly murders.
But who did what? Is Bill Parks, the missing football player, guilty of something? His he a killer? A drug addict? A dealer? Was he set up?
Harry teams up with an over-the-hill teammate of Parks’ to get to the bottom of this fairly straight forward mystery. The ending is almost predictable. You’ll get into the ball park, but if you guess everything in the fourth quarter is anyone’s guess.
This was a bit short on snappy dialogue and heavy on narrative, but it still was a fairly quick and enjoyable read. 3.5 stars
A 1980’s era private eye procedural taking place in Cincinnati, dealing with a local NFL Team player who’s gone missing. Harry Stoner is hired to investigate.
The not so simple missing person case of a slightly off kilter lineman, who seems to have a fondness for physical abuse of women, turns into something with overtones of heavy cocaine and steroid trafficking, a shady detective assigned to a DEA task force, a bodybuilder, scam artist manager and finally a couple of grisly murders.
But who did what? Is Bill Parks, the missing football player, guilty of something? His he a killer? A drug addict? A dealer? Was he set up?
Harry teams up with an over-the-hill teammate of Parks’ to get to the bottom of this fairly straight forward mystery. The ending is almost predictable. You’ll get into the ball park, but if you guess everything in the fourth quarter is anyone’s guess.
This was a bit short on snappy dialogue and heavy on narrative, but it still was a fairly quick and enjoyable read. 3.5 stars
May 30, 2017
There's no question, far removed from Valin's last appearance in publication, that the Cincinnati writer deserved his reputation as one of the genre's best writers during his run. It is a loss to the genre that he chose to bow out. Life's Work is a sturdy entry in the Harry Stoner series and retains a timeliness, in light of later professional sports scandals, well over two decades later. It doesn't have quite enough emotional impact to raise it another level, but Valin fans and devotees of the private eye story won't be disappointed.
September 20, 2008
Disappointingly straightforward and exposition-heavy -- I like my Chandler heirs to be a bit more dreamy than Valin, though I thought The Lime Pit was quite good.
June 14, 2016
Like the series and main character. Some grit but recommended for those who share that taste.
Want to read
September 14, 2018Synopsis: the professional football team in Cincinnati retains PI Stoner to find a missing player.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews