Second Chance

Harry Stoner Mystery #9

by Jonathan Valin

Harry Stoner probes the death of Estelle Pearson fifteen years after it had happened as he searches for her troubled daughter and hopes to keep history from repeating itself

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

278 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

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]

Perhaps I’m too hard on Jonathan Valin. His book before this one—Extenuating Circumstances (1989) didn’t thrill me, and it won the “Shamus.” This one Second Chance (1991) was a “Shamus” runner-up, and it didn’t exactly thrill me either. Yet both are well-written mysteries, superior to most of what you will find in the genre. And I know the reason I’m so hard on Valin: Natural Causes (1983) and Life’s Work (1986) are both masterpieces, and his next book Fire Lake (1987) comes close. Since then, I keep hoping one of his later books will equal these three, but so far they don’t. (I've got two more to go.)

So what if it isn’t a masterpiece? There is a lot of fine writing, and many suspenseful scenes is Second Chance, the tale of Detective Harry Stoner’s doomed search for haunted college coed Kirsten Pearson who—spurred on by her obsessed brother—has begun a perilous quest herself: she and her brother are looking for a violent killer and rapist, recently released from prison, who may have murdered her mother Estelle (whose death was labeled a suicide) fifteen years ago.

Harry goes on a helluva chase, unearthing family secrets, and a uncovering a few crimes of unusual, deliberate violence, before coming face to face with a person of surprising—yet completely plausible—evil. The first two-thirds of the book are absorbing, and the book featurese many fine scenes leading up to the disturbing conclusion.

My major problem is that I was certain of the villain’s identity when I was just slightly halfway through the book, and that’s just a little too early for me. Also, I got the feeling that Valin knew that this was a problems, from the way in which he kept throwing red herrings in my path, to confuse me and keep me from realizing what my mind already knew to be true.

[Toesnorth's mom]

too involved

[Elly Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3* Intriguing, complicated.

[audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dark and sticky little Cincinnati noir for Christmas.

I love Cincinnati, and Jonathan Valin writes the best Cincinnati, focused as he is on describing the buildings--

"A Prairie-style bungalow, L-shaped, parasol-roofed with dark, glistening curls of frozen ivy climbing its board-and-stone walls"

and the neighborhoods--

I could smell Carthage as soon as I got to North Bend Road. The juniper scent of gin, the cooked fruit smell of brandy. The huge brick smokestacks of National Distillers, on the south side of Carthage, left liquor on its breath every afternoon.

in entrancing detail.

Valin also writes a darn good gumshoe: Harry Stoner. Stoner's dogged and dour and women are his weak spot, just like most of the PI's in the genre. But what Stoner also is, is a little bit stupid. He makes bad decisions and fails to learn from them, and then he makes more bad decisions. He has brief moments of clarity where he can recognize he's gone wrong, but he at no point even tries to understand why, so focused as he is on the who. And that makes him intensely readable.

A wonderfully twisted story that hums like a dirty neon sign, reading, "Home for the holidays."

tw:sexual assault, mental illness, child abuse.

[Sandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published back in the early nineties, this is a reliably good PI series set in Cincinnati. Harry Stoner specializes in cases that feature very dysfunctional families and this entry, while dark, was well written with an engaging plot. Listened to the audio version which was narrated by Mark Peckham who did a fine job.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot was good. The story seemed to wander off now and them. Abundant profanity was a turnoff

[Richard Reich · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent mystery, with echoes of Ross Macdonald.

[Cindy B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some graphic sex otherwise interesting. Well performed Mark Peckham.