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    Valentino Pier
    Valentino Pier
    Valentino Pier
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    Valentino Pier

    By Reed Farrel Coleman

    3/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    It all begins when PI Gulliver Dowd is approached by Ellis Torres, a street kid, on Valentino Pier in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Ellis has lost his dog, and after Gulliver helps to find the dog for him, they go their separate ways. So when Ellis is discovered beaten, unconscious and left for dead not far from the pier early the following morning, Gulliver is horrified—and suspicious. He sets out to find the attacker and learn why the boy was targeted. What Gulliver uncovers by way of bizarre clues—amidst threats of danger to himself and his loved ones—leads him on his most curious case yet. Undeniably, there is something amiss at Valentino Pier.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOrca Book Publishers
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781459802117
    Valentino Pier
    Author

    Reed Farrel Coleman

    REED FARREL COLEMAN is a two-time Edgar Award nominee. He has also received the Macavity, Barry and Anthony Awards. To find out more visit: www.reedcoleman.com

    Read more from Reed Farrel Coleman

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    Reviews for Valentino Pier

    3/5

    17 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I would call this a novelette rather than a novel. It is 137 pages, double spaced, largish letters. I enjoyed it. It was relatively fast paced. The author did not constantly throw in what every single person was eating at every single meal, which seems to be the in thing to do these days. The hero of the story is quite unusual in his physical makeup. And within his deformity, is a streak of gentleness and compassion. A street urchin and his dog figure prominently and, of course, it is obvious that the story is going to end well. Which it does.
    • 4/5
      This was intriguing. I picked this up because I've only just discovered Reed Farrel Coleman. Our library had this (I'd not heard of Rapid Reads before either)and it was a decent little story. Gulliver Dowd is an interesting character, I enjoy PI/noir-ish stories.
      And it will be nice, having some titles for Readers Advisory that are for challenged readers. I'll look into more of these for the library.
    • 3/5
      An interesting quick read, we worth the time.
    • 4/5
      For those readers who are unfamiliar with Raven Books' Rapid Reads, I highly recommend them for commuters, or coffee/lunch breaks. They are complete stories told in a condensed time. PI Gulliver Dowd is not your usual protaganist. I love this character--tough, gritty with heart, his stature is short and twisted but don't underestimate him. I truly enjoy his characterization that is reminiscent of the old hard-boiled pot-boiler plots of his predecessors of the early days of pulp fiction.This is the second Gulliver Dowd book I've read but was quite different from the first. In this outing the character's soft side comes forward without making him any less of a threat to his suspects or villains as the case may be. Befriending a young boy, obviously a street kid, he helps him find his well-named dog, Ugly. A bond quickly begins to form between them regardless of Gulliver's hesitancy about pets, dogs in particular; but when the boy is attacked and near death it's Gulliver and Ugly who seek the answers. I enjoyed the book once again along with the characters old and new. Well-written series by Reed Farrel Coleman.
    • 2/5
      The author's name sounded familiar and when I looked back on a spreadsheet I keep of "Books Read," I found that in 2008 I'd read the first three Moe Prager mysteries and rated them 3,5, and 4 accordingly.First, the title. I know Ellis Torres was attacked close to Valentino Pier, but did really that much action take place on that particular pier to name a book after it? I don't recall finding many references to it. I'm assuming this is to be the first in a series because there were so many loose ends left untied...Keisha and Detective Patrick, Nina, what she did to Gulliver, and what happened with the missing daughter? She's still missing! Are we going to forget about her?On the back cover of the book Reed Farrel Coleman was called a "hard-boiled poet" and "the noir poet laureate." If a reader is looking for a noir mystery with a hard-boiled detective, I think s/he would be disappointed with Gulliver Dowd. If he is meant to be, it certainly doesn't come across in this book.The writing also bothered me. The first half of the novel seemed to mimic the cadence of the old detective stories with short staccato sentences, more like a movie script than a book. After awhile I became annoyed with the incomplete sentences and started editing some of them. The last part of book read differently, with more connected sentences and thoughts, less annoying.All in all, I felt kind of hollow after I read the book. I think it could have been much better, more fleshed out.
    • 4/5
      Reed Farrel Coleman describes Gulliver Dowd as follows: “Gulliver was so short that his reflection filled up only the bottom half of a mirror. Gulliver looked as if he had been built from mismatched body parts. His arms and legs were too small, even for his squat body. His hands were too big for his arms. His fingers, too small for his hands. His head, too big for his height. But the cruelest thing God had done was to give Gulliver a handsome face.” Dowd was adopted as a child along with a young Black girl, Keisha, who he considered his sister. They both overcame the odds, he becoming a private investigator and she becoming a police officer. Since her on-the-job death seven years ago, he’s been mourning her and has vowed to find her killer. He’s gone so far as to move into her Red Hook loft, to feel ‘closer’ to her.DirtyWorkThe two best months of Dowd’s life were the two months at the end of high school when he was dating the gorgeous Nina Morton. She made him forget what a cruel joke he was, until she dumped him on graduation day. Now, in Dirty Work, seventeen years have passed (for all seventeen years he’s been dreaming about her), and she comes to him asking him to help locate her (and his) missing daughter, Anka, a daughter he never knew he had. With the help of his friend, and former Navy SEAL, Ahmed Foster, Dowd visits the prestigious Wilton Academy which Anka attended, snoops around and comes up with an answer I didn’t see coming.In Valentino Pier, Nina has called him again, but he’s ignored her call.ValentinoPier Instead, he takes a walk along Valentino Pier in Red Hook and is approached by a young homeless boy, Ellis Torres, who starts talking to him. Torres has seen Dowd in the neighborhood and trusts him…somewhat. Torres asks Dowd to find his dog, Ugly, who has disappeared and Dowd agrees. He even goes so far as to give Torres $20 for food for both him and the dog, when it is returned. When Torres is found beaten up early the next morning and hospitalized, Dowd vows to find out what happened. Dowd always sides with the underdog, as that’s how he sees himself. Dowd and Ugly, with limited help from Ahmed Foster, crack the case.TheBoardwalkSam Patrick is a cop Dowd met in Valentino Pier. Patrick worked at the same precinct as Keisha, the 75th. Patrick knew her and respected her, which is more than Dowd could say about many of the cops. Patrick and Dowd became friends and when Patrick calls him to request that they meet…in some isolated place…later that night to talk about Keisha’s murder, Dowd readily agrees. Patrick never shows up and Dowd driving home, is rammed three times by a van, that last hit overturning Dowd’s car. At the hospital, Dowd overhears that a cop was shot by accident and died. When he finds out it’s Patrick, Dowd doesn’t believe it was an accident and tries to find out what really happened.What’s nice about these books for struggling readers, is that Coleman doesn’t talk down to the reader. He keeps a high interest level, has created interesting characters and believable plots…as far as any mystery can be believable. In approximately 130 pages, Coleman tells an entire story. If he wanted to expand Dowd to full length novels, he could do it without changing the character. All he has to do is extend the story line. There’s action enough to keep readers interested. I highly recommend these books for struggling readers who want a good story.
    • 1/5
      This book is from Raven Books, an imprint of Orca Book Publishers, under the rubric “Rapid Reads”and is classed as Adult Fiction. My copy is an advanced one from uncorrected proofs.The plot is fairly straight forward: the protagonist, PI Gulliver Dowd, kindly searches for a street urchin’s dog. Upon finding the dog and attempting to return it, Dowd discovers the boy badly beaten and left for dead not far from Valentino Pier. The rest of the book is the search for reasons and happenstances, a threat on Dowd’s life materializes and there are a series of strange and outlandish events that can only be called bizarre clues. I must be frank in that while I liked the idea of the plot I found the writing was at best weak. Upon setting out on the first chapter I thought the author was attempting to emulate Ernest Hemingway’s famous terse and understated style or perhaps that of one of the more hard boiled detectives popular many years ago. I was quickly disabused of this notion. It really was the simpler style of “See Spot, See Spot run.” What makes this discovery all the more bizarre is the fact that the author, Reed Farrel Coleman, has seventeen published novels, is a three time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best PI Novel of the Year and, to top it off, a two-time Edgar Award nominee. Perhaps the “adult fiction” this book was listed under was meant to read “tiny tots.” At least it was a fast read.

    Book preview

    Valentino Pier - Reed Farrel Coleman

    VALENTINO

    PIER

    REED FARREL COLEMAN

    Copyright © 2013 Reed Farrel Coleman

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

    or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

    including photocopying, recording or by any information storage

    and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission

    in writing from the publisher.

    Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

    Coleman, Reed Farrel, 1956-

    Valentino Pier [electronic resource] / Reed Farrel Coleman.

    (Rapid Reads)

    Electronic monograph.

    Issued also in print format.

    ISBN 978-1-4598-0210-0 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0211-7 (EPUB)

    I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads (Online)

    PS3553.O47443V35 2013       813’.54       C2013-901879-4

    First published in the United States, 2013

    Library of Congress Control Number: 2013935304

    Summary: PI Gulliver Dowd rescues a street kid’s dog,

    but when the kid is found badly beaten the next day,

    Gulliver uncovers a new mystery. (RL 2.5)

    Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for

    its publishing programs provided by the following agencies:

    the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the

    Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia

    through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

    Design by Teresa Bubela

    Cover photography by Getty Images

    www.orcabook.com

    16 15 14 13 • 4 3 2 1

    To Ezra

    Contents

    CHAPTER ONE

    CHAPTER TWO

    CHAPTER THREE

    CHAPTER FOUR

    CHAPTER FIVE

    CHAPTER SIX

    CHAPTER SEVEN

    CHAPTER EIGHT

    CHAPTER NINE

    CHAPTER TEN

    CHAPTER ELEVEN

    CHAPTER TWELVE

    CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    CHAPTER FOURTEEN

    CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    CHAPTER SIXTEEN

    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    CHAPTER ONE

    Gulliver Dowd had one new message on his cell. His guts knotted up as he listened. The woman was panicked. He could hear it in her voice. It was a voice he knew too well. One he had hoped he would never hear again. The woman’s daughter was gone. He had warned her this would happen. And it had.

    Nina Morton’s voice was cracking now. She was crying. Begging for Dowd’s help. He had found her daughter once. He could do it again. She just knew he could. He could do anything when he put his mind to it. Hadn’t he become a licensed private investigator? Hadn’t he earned his black belt? Hadn’t he become a dead shot? All of this in spite of his deformed body. And Nina swore she would do anything for him. Even marry him if that’s what he wanted. All he had to do was find Anka again. Gulliver stopped listening. He erased the message.

    It wasn’t that Gulliver’s heart didn’t ache. It did. It ached all the time. It would ache for Nina until the day he died. But sometimes you can’t save people from themselves. Nina was like that. She had been Gulliver’s high school girlfriend for two months. Those were the best two months of his life. The names people called him didn’t matter. Midget. Runt. Dwarf. Freak. They couldn’t hurt him. Not as long as she was in love with him. He was Superman as long as he had Nina. It didn’t last. Gulliver knew that nothing good ever lasts.

    That was eighteen years ago. He had spent seventeen of those years hoping Nina would come back to him. And last year she had. Presto! Like magic. Black magic. She had betrayed Gulliver. She had betrayed her daughter. She had betrayed herself. And now the girl was gone again. Gulliver didn’t think the girl would ever be back. But he took no joy in being right. He took no joy in Nina’s loss. He knew what it was like to lose someone forever. No one deserves that kind of pain.

    His mind went to Keisha. She was gone too. Forever. People don’t come back from the grave. He had been so proud of his adopted sister when she graduated from the police academy. He looked at Keisha’s picture in the frame on his desk. Her beautiful black skin. Her fierce eyes. Her wary smile. All set against her dress blue uniform. Then he remembered seeing her in the morgue. Cold. Dead. Lost to him. He still didn’t get how it had all gone so wrong. How could someone murder a cop in cold blood? How could they do it in broad daylight? How could seven years go by without the killer being caught? How? How? How? Gulliver had asked himself these same questions every day. He got no answers. But it never stopped him. He would find her killer some day. He would never give up. Never. It’s what kept him going.

    Now he was crying, his tears bitter as lemon juice. His squat body shook. Sometimes Keisha’s murder made him angry. So angry he could explode. Days like today, he was just sad. Sad for Keisha. Sad for himself. When he was like this, there was only one thing to do. Gulliver dialed Steven Mandel’s work number. He and Mandel had known each other since they were little kids. Each was the other’s best friend. Gulliver’s only real friend.

    What’s up, Gullie? asked Mandel.

    Have a drink with me tonight, Rabbi. Gulliver had always called Steven that. He wasn’t sure why. But it fit. Steven was wise and loving. He always had been.

    Can’t. Business. You sound weird. Are you okay?

    Fine, Gulliver lied. He did that sometimes. Lied. In that way he was like everybody else. Not much else about him was.

    He had to get out of his loft. The walls were closing in on him. He wasn’t much of a walker. With short legs. Uneven legs. He wobbled. At least they knew him around Red Hook. No one pointed. The local kids didn’t giggle. Not anymore. He was like a crack in the sidewalk that everyone had gotten used to.

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