The Autumn Dead

A BLAST FROM THE PAST Ex-cop, security guard and sometime actor Jack Dwyer feels a familiar buzz when, after fifteen years, he sees Karen Lane, his old high school flame. But things are going so well with his girlfriend Donna, that he's pretty sure Karen is not what he needs right now. Still, he agrees to retrieve a suitcase for her which she'd left with her last lover, Glendon Evans, a psychiatrist. When Jack goes to Evans's ritzy house, he discovers the doctor out cold. Jack helps him come to, and they talk about the suitcase. Evans says he suspects its contents are important, but the suitcase has disappeared. Jack must warn Karen, and he knows he'll find her at their high school reunion. But Jack's little trip down memory lane doesn't last long, for murder will prevent one of his classmates from ever leaving the reunion... "The Dwyer books continue to be among the best of the new P.I. series, and Dwyer and Harris are rapidly becoming the modern-day Nick and Nora Charles." -- The Orlando Sentinel "As the narrator, Dwyer has an appealing, self-deprecating sense of humor....The dialogue is snappy, and Gorman writes brightly and crisply." -- The Washington Post Book World "The sequel to Murder Straight Up and New, Improved Murder will add to Gorman's laurels and the popularity of his Midwestern hero-narrator, Jack Dwyer....The author's salty humor and fast, tuned-in dialogue quicken the pace of a dandy mystery." -- Publishers Weekly. "This quickly moving story offers believable characters, an excellent setting, and a touching poignancy." -- Booklist "Jack Dwyer is once again lured into a tangle of sex and violence....[His] narration is breezily sardonic." -- The Kirkus Reviews