Naked Moon

January 11, 2010
In Edgar-winner Stansberry’s strong fourth novel to feature San Francisco PI Dante Mancuso (after 2008’s The Ancient Rain
), leaked secrets about “the company,” Mancuso’s shadowy former employer (“a front for intelligence operations”), prompt the company to end the stalemate that allowed Dante to walk away in the previous book. Meanwhile, Leanora Chin, a cop with Special Investigations, is threatening Dante’s cousin Gary, who runs a shady warehouse operation. Gary fears the wrath of the powerful Wu Benevolent Association if he cooperates with Chin. The company tells Gary it can halt the investigation if Dante will help the company. Trapped in a three-way vise, Dante searches for a way to neutralize the explicit threats to his cousin and others dear to him, while knowing that the only permanent solution is to disappear. San Francisco’s North Beach is a virtual character as the stoic Dante fearlessly plays out the poor hand he’s been dealt against a table of sharks with all the chips in the pot.

February 15, 2010
San Francisco private eye Dante Mancuso haunts his beloved North Beach while ghosts from his past haunt him.

Dante, a man with a checkered history, is back in North Beach, his home town. Except that it doesn't feel much like a hometown. A sour economy has transformed its sturdy old neighborhoods into withered old neighborhoods. More to the point, Dante has become a person of interest to dangerous people with long memories. Years ago, when he left, or was pushed from, the SFPD, he signed on with a sinister security organization known as"the company" that proved to be every bit as fraught as the Company operating out of Langley. Nor, as events proved, was lowercase c any more forgiving than capital C if a disaffected agent attempted to slip out the door with a stolen journal. For reasons that are never made clear, the purloined journal is precious—a fact well known to Dante, who lifted it, thinking it might someday serve as a badly needed bargaining chip. Now, suddenly, the company wants its property returned. As Dante soon discovers, what the company wants the company means to get even if it takes killing everything Dante has ever loved.

As usual, Stansberry (The Ancient Rain, 2008, etc.) speaks pitch-perfect noir, undermined this time by an often incoherent plot.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2010
San Francisco PI Dante Mancuso ("The Ancient Rain") is faced with a dilemma. His cousin is at the center of a federal investigation, the shadowy organization that Mancuso once worked for might help him in return for one last favor, and now people Dante knows are being garroted. He can trust no one. VERDICT Heart-racing suspense and a shocking ending from the Edgar Award-winning Stansberry make this noir crime novel a good choice for Robert Crais fans. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 11/1/09.]

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2010
Weve said it all along: whereas others play at noir, Stansberry delivers the real thing. That was true with the marvelous Ancient Rain (2008), and its even more true with this latest entry in the Dante Mancuso series. This time the San Francisco P.I.s shady past (working for a clandestine government security outfit called the Company) comes back to haunt him. Ordinarily, you dont ever quit the Company, but Dante managed it through some tricky leverage; now the Company has its own leverage in the form of Dantes cousin, who has turned to the group for help when his warehousing business goes south. It was nice to think you had a choice, that your actions made a difference one way or another, Dante muses, but he knows better. Think of the end of For Whom the Bell TollsRobert Jordan with a Gatling gun between his legs and the Fascists coming up the mountain en masseand youll have some idea of just how dark the world looks to Dantes shrouded eyes (and, unlike Jordan, Dante harbors no illusions about honor). As always, Stansberry combines his unrelenting noir world view with remarkably lyrical prose. You want a similar title? Try Mozarts Requiem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)