Hit and Run

Lt. Joe Dante #9

by Christopher Newman

Detective Joe Dante lives in a downtown loft and hangs with an uptown crowd.  A cop who doesn't act, talk, or play like other cops, Dante's got Brooklyn-bred street smarts and a half-finished Ph.D. dissertation on his bookshelf.  But when a man is struck down by a car outside a posh Manhattan hotel, Dante is plunged into a world like no other he's ever seen.

The victim was a corporate executive.  The killer was a hit-and-run driver.  And when Dante and his team investigate the accident, they find a billion-dollar stock-market deal and the tracks of a Wall Street financier gone missing from his Sutton Place co-op.

Now Dante is putting together the jagged pieces of a puzzle of sex, money, ambition, and high-tech fraud.  It's a hunt that will take him from the pinnacle of high finance to Manhattan's meanest streets.  Because Detective Joe Dante is chasing a man who has a thirty-eight-million-dollar motive for murder--multiple murder--and the cunning to get away wit

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 10, 1997

About the author

Born in San Francisco, California in 1952, Christopher Newman was educated in Bay Area Catholic schools, the University of California at Santa Cruz and Birmingham University, England. He travelled overland from Europe across the Asian subcontinent to Singapore alone in his late teens. Before he was 21 he'd worked for a year aboard a tanker plying trade between the Persian Gulf and ports around the Pacific rim. He wrote the first draft of his third published novel, Manana Man, while in residence in Cali, Colombia his senior year in college. At 27, he moved to New York City, working as a trim carpenter for five years in Manhattan before publishing his first Joe Dante novel, Midtown South, in 1985. When that title met with considerable commercial success, his publisher convinced him to turn his protagonist into a series character. Eight more Joe Dante novels followed, all making various national best seller lists. Midtown North, published in 1991, was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Chains of Command, left unfinished at the time of best-selling author William Caunitz death in 1998, was completed by Mr. Newman at the estate's request. It was named a 1999 New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Mr. Newman left New York in 2002 and currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky.

Reviews

[Edie Kennard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hit and Run by Christopher Newman takes a different spin on the mystery genre. Instead of keeping you guessing about the culprit, Newman lays his cards on the table right away. This isn't a whodunit; it's more of a relentless pursuit. The thrill comes from watching the protagonist close in on the known antagonist. What really stood out for me was the fantastic character development. Dante, in particular, was a standout – I found myself completely invested in his journey.