The Lime Pit

cd: Who are your writing influences?Valin: Well, I really don't have any except maybe Dashiell Hammett. cd: Who did you read when you were young? Valin: Books which were assigned to me for school projects: In school, what were your interests?Valin: Not much of anything except getting through: Why didn't you continue the Harry Stoner series since it was so popular?Valin: He got boring to me. cd: You haven't written a book since the last Stoner in the series Missing which was published in 1995. So [...]

Synopsis/blurb……The first Harry Stoner mysteryHarry Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition. A loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch, he's unable to look away from the world's corruption and unable to avoid trying--futiley--to do something about it. His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. Neither pretty nor engaging, she doesn't have much to offer at all, and somehow that makes her disapp [...]

Inspired by friend Col (please see his outstanding review: /review/show )I dug this one out of my library where it's been filed with 4 or 5 other entries in Valin's outstanding "Harry Stoner" series.I bought each of those novels when they first came out in paperback from Avon - early 1980s."Harry Stoner" might be my favorite private eye character of that era.I hadn't read this in nearly 30 years.The novel is leisurely paced. The first 45-50 pages were so slow I was afraid I was going to have to [...]

Cincinnati P.I. Harry Stoner is hired by a retired vet to find Cindy Ann Evans, a troubled teenager who'd been rooming with him until very recently. His client sends Stoner over to talk to a couple suspicious neighbors, who'd befriended Cindy Ann before her sudden disappearance. He also provides Stoner with a couple of obscene Polaroids of Cindy Ann that she'd left behind. Stoner reluctantly takes the case, figuring the girl for a wayward vixen who'd gotten tired of the old man and blew town. He [...]

Jonathan Valin was a new author for me, brought to my attention by one of my GR friends. Thank you, Cathy. Some readers compare authors. John D. MacDonald to Robert B. Parker to Dashell Hammit, to Raymond Chandler. And I suppose that's logical as authors tend to lean on each other's style. I'm more character driven and tend think about what Spenser, McGee, or Elvis Cole might do in a given situation. I can now add Harry Stoner to that list. I was impressed with the character created by Valin in [...]

Library AudibleThe first Harry Stoner mystery! Harry Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition. A loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch, he's unable to look away from the world's corruption and unable to avoid trying--futiley--to do something about it. His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. Neither pretty nor engaging, she doesn't have much to offer at all, and somehow that makes her disappear [...]

I listened to this audiobook. Harry Stoner is a typical hard-boiled private eye in Cincinnati. He is called by a tottering old man who wants to hire him to find his little girl. As it happens, she is not his daughter or granddaughter, she is his companion. Harry looks into the disappearance, but really thinks the young girl just moved on from taking advantage of a lonely old man. But as he delves into it what he finds is a prostitution ring ruining young girl and boys. He begins to suspect the g [...]

Jonathan Valin is a great observational writer of both characters and places. In Harry Stone he created a multi-layered, complex and flawed character that one immediately identifies with and cares about, and the book is populated with a myriad of other memorable and well drawn characters. The pacing is good and the dialogue snappy and realistic, and the contextualisation is strong without being overbearing. I thought the first half of the book was excellent, but the story started to slip a bit i [...]

a good solid mystery, recommended by one of my co-workers. Seems to be currently out of print, but is likely to be in your local library. at least if your local library is in Ohio, since Valin (and his protagonist Harry Stoner) is a Cincinnati boy. (yup, said co-worker hails from Ohio as well -- thus his ability to recommend a mystery that my mother had never heard of. and let me tell you, that takes some doing.)i can't say i'll be rabidly searching out the rest of this series. but then again, i [...]

"I first read this about thirty years ago and I think at the time I borrowed some of his other books from the library. This features hard-boiled private eye, Harry Stoner, and is a good read but not as good as I had remembered." was what I wrote on 22 July 2012. I think that pretty much sums up how I felt about it this time around. I suspect the author was trying a little too hard to come up with a 1980s version of Chandler's Marlowe.

Recommended by Stuart Kaminsky for The Rap Sheet's One Book Project, a good source the next time you need something to read. Harold Stoner is a Cincinnati P.I. looking into the fate of a sixteen-year old runaway who has shown up in some nasty pictures. Even a nice staid town like Cincinnati has its seamy side Kaminsky says Valin never got the credit he deserved for this well-written series.

Ho riletto questo romanzo dopo molti anni, perché confesso che non lo ricordavo affatto. Ho scoperto una buona rivisitazione dell'hard-boiled, ma soprattutto ho trovato un libro scritto molto bene. Se vogliamo trovargli un difetto, questa riproposizione non risulta molto vitale né ben attualizzata, anche tenendo conto dei trent'anni passati nel frattempo.

The first Harry Stoner mystery *pub. 1980*The hard-headed and soft hearted PI, knows his way around Cincinnati. With a good sense of place, and a very "pulp" feelis was a good debut. Will be checking in with Harry in the futurence I've collected the whole series.:)

This book was published in 1980 and I thought reading it now brought a vintage feel to the book. It was a good PI/mystery book and I enjoyed reading it. I will probably put more of this series on my "to read" list.

Interesting and well performed by Mark Peckham.

Review to come

Harry Stoner is a hoot and I love that it's set in Cincinnati. Hope Valin gets around to writing another one in this series, which I hear he's been promising to do.

Good plot, good story well written