Deception Pass

Emerson's only moderately competent private eye sails through a tale that presents moral dilemmas as well as insights into relationships without being pretentious, some wildly improbable characters, witty wise-guy prose and a strongly realistic evocation of the West Coast. Easy reading and excellent of its type!

This was the first (but not the last) Earl W. Emerson book I've read. I found it very enjoyable, and could not put it down until I was done. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I especially enjoyed all the references to familiar places. I went to our local bookstore this afternoon and purchased several more Earl W. Emerson mysteries. Can't wait to get started. Going back to start at the beginning of the Thomas Black series with "Rainy City", as I would like to see his relationship with Kathy unfold in chronological order. Highly recommended and just plain fun!

I've read all of Emerson's Thomas Black books and have enjoyed every single one of them. (I'm currently reading Catfish Cafe). I started reading this series almost 10 years ago and am constantly waiting for new ones to come out. The humor as well as mystery in his books keep you reading until the very end. I'm not into really gory and scary books but I love mysteries. Emerson's writing gives me exactly what I want. Deception Pass was not quite as suspenseful as some of his other books (try Million Dollar Tattoo). I kind of knew the ending in the middle of the book, but I read mostly because I enjoy the character Thomas Black and I like to hear the descriptions of Seattle in the books. This book is written in the typical Emerson style and you won't be disappointed!

Emerson's books are a new discovery for me, and I'm having a blast reading them. I haven't liked a detective as much as Thomas Black since A.A. Fair was cranking out the Donald Lam mysteries. And that's been quite a while back! The repartee between Black and his Mrs. rates up there with the quick-fire variety of Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell in the film "His Girl Friday." God bless Emerson, he has the gift of being able to write philosopically without drifting into the maudlin, but not so much so that the reader will start to wonder if Travis McGee had moved from Ft. Lauderdale to Seattle. The story moves right along with a stunning, sometimes freakish cast of minor characters that alternately leave one laughing or gagging. I'm so happy to have found Emerson's books, and I'm REALLY looking forward to the ones I've not yet read.

Deception Pass is the tenth Thomas Black mystery by Earl Emerson. The books are suspenseful PI novels set within the framework of the relationship between Thomas, a quick-witted, smart-mouthed private investigator and his best friend, Kathy Birchfield. The friendship between the two will feel familiar to anyone who has had a very good friend of the opposite sex and who has wondered, at times during that friendship, whether it could deepen into something romantic.In early Thomas Black books, Thomas and Kathy's friendship provides both context and subplot. Then in the third book, "Yellow Dog Party," the relationship shifts and leads into "The Portland Laugher," where it takes center stage. "Laugher" is Emerson's darkest, most complex book, sending the reader on an emotional roller coaster that ends satisfyingly in the following book, "The Vanishing Smile."Two books later, though, you might wonder what else there is to say. In "Deception Pass," Thomas and Kathy are happily married. Neither has an incurable disease, has been kidnapped or is cheating on the other. So now what? Must we just to do without the funny verbal sparring, the sexual tension, that has characterized the other books?Happily, the answer is no. In "Deception Pass," Thomas and Kathy have settled into the kind of easy relationship they had in the first books, except that Kathy lives upstairs with Thomas instead of downstairs in the basement apartment, and they fool around occasionally.One October morning, Kathy brings Thomas a new client. The client is Lainie Smith, Seattle's "Mother Theresa with a bankroll," as Thomas puts it. Lainie is being blackmailed by someone who claims Lainie was involved in a grisly multiple homicide that took place in a cabin at Deception Pass more than seventeen years ago.Although she claims she wasn't involved, Lainie admits that as a teenager she knew a drifter named Charlie Groth, the man who was ultimately convicted of the murders and recently executed. She's terrified the blackmailer will reveal her past as a runaway and a drug addict, a past she has been trying to attone for ever since.At Kathy's urging, Thomas takes the case. His investigation leads him to the original cast of characters involved in Groth's apprehension, trial and twelve-year-long appeal. Although, each one knows about the mystery woman Groth claimed actually committed the murders, none of them has been able to find her--not now and not seventeen years ago when the crime was committed. Or so they say.When his chief suspect in the blackmailing is found murdered, Thomas realizes he's caught up in a series of lies nearly twenty years old. With growing doubts about even his own client, he continues to sift through the layers of deception to uncover the truth about what happened that night at Deception Pass. What he finds forces him to reexamine not only Charlie Groth and Lainie Smith's concept of guilt and innocence, but his own.Deception Pass is an excellent book in a