The John Francis Cuddy series
BLUNT DARTS introduced Cuddy, the Boston-based private eye who has become Jeremiah Healy’s best-known character. Moral, honest–and violent, when need-be–Cuddy makes his living solving cases that have fallen through the cracks of the formal judicial system. Of the thirteen Cuddy novels and two collections of short stories, fifteen have either won or been nominated for the Shamus Award.
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Shamus Award Nominee for Best First NovelBLUNT DARTS: Cuddy is asked to search for the missing son of a suburban-Boston judge–and pillar of the community–who doesn’t seem to want his own child returned to him. E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012) Originally published in hc: Walker & Co., 1984; pb: Warner, 1985, and Pocket Books, 1991 |
Shamus Award Winner for Best NovelTHE STAKED GOAT: A friend’s murder yanks Cuddy back to the dark days of his service as a military police lieutenant in Vietnam. E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012)Originally published in hc: Harper & Row, 1986; pb: Pocket, 1987 and 1991
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SO LIKE SLEEP: An African-American homicide detective who let Cuddy walk on a killing outside Boston’s jurisdiction now asks the private investigator to help a black college student accused of killing his white girlfriend just before a suburban, group-counseling session involving hypnosis.
E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012) Originally published in hc: Harper & Row, 1987; pb: Pocket, 1988 and 1991Buy for Kindle For Nook and other platforms
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Shamus Award Nominee for Best NovelSWAN DIVE: A skittish lawyer who was a college classmate of Cuddy’s is representing the wife in a stormy–and physically abusive–marriage. At the attorney’s request, the private eye reluctantly agrees to bodyguard the battered woman. E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012) Originally published in hc: Harper & Row, 1988; pb: Pocket, 1989 and 1991 |
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YESTERDAY’S NEWS: Cuddy is asked by a muck-raking journalist in a shabby, southeastern Massachusetts city to determine who killed her confidential source. When the reporter is also found dead, the private investigator suspects a conspiracy to cover up municipal corruption.
E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012) Originally published in hc: Harper & Row, 1989; pb: Pocket, 1990 |
RIGHT TO DIE: A law professor, crusading to legalize assisted suicide because of her late husband’s agonized passing, begins to receive death threats at her office, book-signings, and even home. She discounts them, but her secretary and a gay-activist friend hire Cuddy to figure out who’s sending the threats and why.
E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012) Originally published in hc: Pocket, 1991; pb: Pocket, 1992 |
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Shamus Award Nominee for Best NovelSHALLOW GRAVES: A young fashion model is strangled in her apartment, apparently the result of a burglary gone bad. Cuddy investigates on behalf of a life insurance company, only to be dragooned by the model’s father, a Boston mobster, into finding her killer so that the “family” can exact its own form of justice. E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012) Originally published in hc: Pocket, 1992; pb: Pocket, 1993 |
Shamus Award Nominee for Best NovelFOURSOME: Cuddy reluctantly agrees to help the defendant accused of murdering three people from metro-west Boston. The killings–by crossbow–occurred at a lakefront house in rural Maine, where the city-boy private investigator literally feels like a fish out of water. E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012) Originally published in hc: Pocket, 1993; pb: Pocket, 1994 |
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ACT OF GOD: Cuddy is approached by two clients jointly–one, the grieving widow of a murdered furniture-store owner and the other, the smarmy brother of the store’s sex-kitten secretary, who disappeared a week after the murder.
E-book: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (April 17, 2012) Originally published in hc: Pocket, 1994; pb: Pocket, 1995 |
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RESCUE: In New Hampshire and Florida, Cuddy searches for a boy with a prominent birthmark when his natural parents seem unconcerned about his apparent kidnapping.
(hc: Pocket, 1995; pb: Pocket, 1996) |
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Shamus Award Nominee for Best NovelINVASION OF PRIVACY: A female banker asks Cuddy to look into the background of her new boyfriend, who at age 45 seems to have no financial history. (hc: Pocket, 1996; pb: Pocket, 1997) |
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Shamus Award Nominee for Best NovelTHE ONLY GOOD LAWYER: Cuddy tries to help a husband accused of murdering his wife’s divorce attorney, who was a partner in a Boston law firm and served earlier as a prosecutor of juvenile gangs. (hc: Pocket, 1998; pb: Pocket, 1999) |
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SPIRAL: Cuddy is asked by his former Military Police commander in Vietnam to investigate who could have killed his granddaughter during a “birthday party” in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
(hc: Pocket, 1999; pb: Pocket, 2000) |
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