Fintan Dunne Books In Publication Order
- The Hour of the Cat (2005)
- The Man Who Never Returned (2010)
- Dry Bones (2013)
Standalone Novels In Publication Order
- Banished Children of Eve (2008)
Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order
- Looking for Jimmy (2007)
Fintan Dunne Book Covers
Standalone Novels Book Covers
Non-Fiction Book Covers
Peter Quinn Books Overview
The Hour of the Cat
It’s just another murder, one of the hundreds of simple homicides in 1939, a spinster nurse is killed in her apartment; a suspect is caught with the murder weapon and convicted. Fintan Dunne, the P.I. lured onto the case; and coerced by conscience into unraveling the complex setup that has put an innocent man on Death Row, will soon find this is a murder with tentacles that stretch far beyond the crime scene to Na*zi Germany, in fact; following it to the end leads him into a murder conspiracy of a scope that defies imagintion. The same clouds are rolling over Berlin: where plans for a military coup are forming among a cadre of Wehrmacht officers. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Military Intelligence, is gripped by a deadly paralysis: he is neither with the plotters nor against them. Joining them in treason would violate every value he holds as an officer. Betraying the plotters to the Gestapo Chief Reinhard Heydrich might just forsake the country s last hope to avert utter destruction and centuries of shame. Heydrich is suspicious. With no limits to Hitler s manic pursuit of territorial expansion, with crimes against the people candy coated as racial purification, the ‘hour of the cat’ looms when every German conscience must make a choice. When he receives an order to assist in a sinister covert operation on foreign shores, Canaris s hour has come. Writing with masterful command of fact and fiction, Peter Quinn transports readers to a pre War New York and Berlin brim*ming with atmosphere and consequence. Hour of the Cat is a stunning achievement: tautly suspenseful, hauntingly memorable, and brilliantly authentic.
The Man Who Never Returned
Judge Joe Crater’s disappearance in 1930 spawned countless conspiracy theories and captured the imagination of a nation caught in the grip of The Depression. Fifteen years later, Fintan Dunne, the detective encountered in Quinn’s novel Hour of the Cat, recently retired and bored, answers a summons to New York where he is asked to solve the old case for a newspaper magnate interested in making a profit. Dunne confronts haphazard investigating, aggrieved participants and a grieving spouse as he travels from New York to Los Angeles and Havana, untangling decades old clues in an attempt to solve the mystery still baffling America. Peter Quinn once again has written a compelling blend of history and fiction that is simply unputdownable.
Banished Children of Eve
Banished Children of Eve, a novel of America struggling to become a melting pot, marks the debut of a gifted storyteller. It is New York City, the time of the Civil War. The war has just entered its third bloody year, and the North is about to impose its first military draft, a decision that will spark the most devastating and destructive riot in American history. Quinn gives us these events through the eyes of people drawn from every part of the city’s life minstrels, street gangs, servants, soldiers, and clergymen, Yankee, African American, and Irish. It is the New York of Jimmy Dunne, a streetwise Irish American hustler in search of the big score. Of Eliza, an African American actress seeking her place in a city where her family has lived since colonial times. Of Jack Mulcahey, Eliza’s lover, who escaped death in the Irish famine of the 1840s, and is struggling to hold on to his position as one of New York’s leading minstrels. At the heart of Banished Children of Eve is the American search for the Promised Land. Along with Jimmy, Eliza, and Jack, it is a search shared by Charles Bedford, a scheming and ambitious stockbroker, and by Margaret O’Driscoll, an immigrant servant girl in Bedford’s home. There are two other shadowy presences. One is a drunken and broken drifter, Stephen Foster, who has given away all his songs, but who can still remember the music, which becomes the music of the novel. The other is the Civil War itself. Through the stories of these disparate lives, all brought together in the cataclysm of the Draft Riots, Quinn spins out the fates of his rich and vital characters as he brings magically to life a pivotal period in this country’s history.
Looking for Jimmy
After waking up the neighborhood with The Morning Show Murders, and keeping readers up late solving The Midnight Show Murders, Al Roker returns with his most tantalizing mystery to date. Celebrity chef turned sleuth Billy Blessing finds his plate full of danger once again, as secrets from his long buried past threaten to make a comeback. Before Billy had his five star restaurant in New York, before he was tapped to co host the morning show Wake Up, America! and travel with it for a week in the Windy City before he even assumed the name Billy Blessing he lived a totally different life under a very different identity: as wily con man Billy Blanchard. Caught trying to run a scam on a shady Detroit businessman, Billy did time for his crimes, reinvented himself, and has successfully kept that part of his past covered up ever since. But when he and Eddie Patton, a nosy ex cop with a long memory, are guests on a popular Chicago TV talk show, the off camera chat turns to blackmail. And Billy may have no choice but to pay up or see the embarrassing truth from being blogcast to the world on Patton’s true crime website. This being Chicago, secrets have a way of getting out and getting people killed. When Patton winds up dead in his apartment only hours after trying to shake Billy down, it s just the first in a string of killings that has America s most beloved TV host scrambling for clues, unsure who his friends are, and desperate to clear his name before he becomes the media s latest poster child for celebrity scandal. Throw in a budding romance with a visiting movie star and Billy Blessing may have finally gotten himself into one sticky situation even he can t talk his way out of. Fast paced, funny, and bubbling over with inside scoop on the business they call show, The Talk Show Murders is Al Roker mystery fiction at its delicious, dishy best.
Related Authors