Cape Disappointment

I have always enjoyed Earl Emerson's books , especially as I live in the area he writes about. I was really happy to see a new Thomas Black book out and I was sure not disappointed. Thomas is back with a bang! I had head there were folks who thought his government conspiracy theories were a bit far fetched but one has only to read the news and watch the news and understand how very close to the truth this book could actually be! Its scary but I am NOT a person who trusts in our own government today so I fell right into the wild scenario that Emerson was using to push the pace in this book. I had a problem putting it down. I know its hard for Mr. Emerson to do two full time jobs!! But I hope he can keep up with his writing AND the Seattle Fire Department too! Boy Howdy Thomas, good to have you and Kathy back!

Seattle private investigator Thomas Black knows he is fortunate to have survived the bomb blast in the school gym that left him hospitalized. However, he is also struggling with his memory as he unsure whether he is a widower or if his wife Kathy Birchfield is alive. A lawyer, Kathy was a passenger on a chartered plane that crashed into the sea with no survivors; also killing Senator Jane Sheffield. Although he knows she is dead, he keeps seeing her and her cell phone is being used to call him late at nights. Twin brothers Bert and Elmer "Snake" Slezak try to keep Black safe. The former CIA sniper Bert believes the crash that allegedly killed Black's wife was deliberate. Fans will appreciate the return of Black (see Fat Tuesday and Catfish Café) in a super over the Space Needle conspiracy thriller that hooks the audience from the onset when the confused detective cannot understand why he sees his wife whom he thinks died. The story line is fast-paced, has ties to 9/11 and makes the strong case that the government's prime role is to cover-up the mistakes of leaders. No one but politicians and their retinue will be disappointed with Earl Emerson's excellent return to Black. Harriet Klausner

As a resident of Seattle I have read all of Earl Emerson's books. He is a great author and I always look forward to his latest. This one was a little different, but great! I recommend trying his previous books as well as this latest one.

A couple of years ago when I heard Earl Emerson speak he promised that he was working on a new Thomas Black book, and that the publisher had okayed it after years of saying they'd rather he continue to write firefighting thrillers. The only catch was that he had to write a "big book" that wouldn't turn away the new readers he had garnered. Last year he said that he was writing the new Black book as a thriller, hoping to catch the spirit of the old books with the characters and snappy dialogue we all loved which were written as mysteries (more slower in pace). Well, I'm here to tell you that for me he succeeded big time! It is a big book. It does capture the spirit of the Northwest and the jauntiness of the characters that we all loved from before. The only catch is that I can't tell you too much about the story without spoiling it for you. I want you to have the same experience I had of reading it without knowing more than you should ahead of time - no spoilers here! So all I'm going to tell you is that it starts with Thomas in the hospital, not remembering much of anything. He knows he's hurt, he sort of knows who he is, he's vaguely aware of where he is. He thinks Kathy has come to visit him, but there's this redhead who keeps floating through his consciousness. Definitely not Kathy! The subtext is about politics, politicians and their trustworthiness, and crazy conspiracy theories. I didn't know where this was going to end up until right towards the end and then I just sat back and watched Thomas Black do his thing with a huge smile on my face! I was suffering from the flu at the time, and reading Cape Disappointment made it a little easier to forget about coughing and breathe! I swear! Wonderful read! "

After a 10-year hiatus, PI Thomas Black returns with the strongest entry yet in this series. The story begins with Thomas in the hospital recovering from injuries received when a bomb exploded near a political candidate for whom Thomas was working. That candidate's opponent had been killed weeks earlier in an airplane crash that also took the life of Thomas's wife, Kathy. As Thomas tries to remember what happened from the time of the plane crash on, he also has to struggle with what is real and what is a product of his medication. This is a terrible oversimplification of a complex plot that is complemented by the book's complex structure. Emerson's writing is strong and the plotting is air-tight. The grimness of fresh grief is offset by the humor and the genuine warmth of Thomas's character. The conspiracy theories introduced by one of the secondary characters are fascinating. The reader can choose to buy into them or choose to read them purely as imaginative fiction, but the way Emerson tightly connects his fiction to reality is bold and breathtaking, and best of all is that he pushes his readers to think about the possibilities. One of the things I've always liked about Emerson's leading characters, such as Thomas Black and Mac Fontana, is that they are not shy about their opinions, that they think for themselves, that they have an innate and healthy disdain for politicians, bankers, corporate bosses, and anyone else whose profession involves lying on a daily basis. One of the points Emerson makes -- though he never beats the reader over the head with a message in favor of telling a ripping yarn -- is how investigative journalism is now controlled by a few large corporations. What that says about the future of truth in journalism and the lack of transparency in government is truly scary. And you don't have to be a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist to know what a bad idea it is to have a few rich people controlling the media. Thomas's struggle to remember becomes a race to find the truth. And the truth may be something that will haunt him forever. Few thrillers grip me as emotionally as this one did, start to finish. I think this is Emerson's best book ever. I'd like to add that I'm disappointed that some readers cannot separate reality from fiction. That a number of conspiracy theories are expounded by a flakey fictional character in the book does not mean that the author intends for the reader to accept them as fact. I do think the author says that as citizens we have a responsibility to not merely accept 'spin,' but to do our own research and reach our conclusions based on fact and not journalistic pablum and certainly not on fictional stories intended first and foremost to entertain. We all know, for example, that had the financial press done its job, had we as citizens insisted that they do their job, parts of the economic recession we are now enduring could have been avoided, i.e. the bank failures and the Madoff larceny. I personally d