Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Mystery

I love the Lew Fanesco series. These books are wonderful with great characters. I can hardly wait for the next one. A wonderful portrale of Sarasota FL. I'm going to have to make a trip down there to find the dairy queen! Loved it.

surely it is worth five stars, is it not? This was the third novel in a series featuring Lew Fonesca, a grieving widower who relocates from Chicago to Florida and nearly gives up on life. It was the first of the series that I read, but now I've added book one, Vengeance, and book two, Retribution, and am about to start on the newest, Denial. Fonesca fascinates me. Through the four books, which probably cover less than two years in his life, he slowly builds a new network of family and friends and even a love interest. He solves mysteries, taking jobs as a finder of missing persons and as a process server. He gets into danger. He does not commit acts of violence. He lives simply, but thinks deeply. He believes he does not "feel" deeply anymore, due to the tragic loss of his wife, but his actions prove that he does. Kaminsky writes a ton of books, with five different series heroes, and all of them are worth checking out.

This Lew Fonesca book does not quite give us a world-class mystery, but the character development is, indeed, world class.This is a difficult book to put down simply because the readerdoes want to know more about this odd "hero," and where he isgoing. As he goes along his way, he meets, and interacts with,some odd characters, and they usually seem to have something incommon with Fonesca: they are all operating on the fringes ofacceptable society. None of them have much in the way of material possessions, or if they do, they don't care about them,and they have their own motivations and their owns reasons forgoing on.Fonesca, although making a living of sorts, is about as much onthe fringe as the rest of them, and during those times when heis attempting to help someone else, we have to wonder how hecan afford to even think of others when his own needs are soacute.This guy, Lew Fonesca, about sums up his view of life, and hispart in it, when he observes: "I work as little as I can, live as cheaply as I can, and have as little to do with people asI can."Quite a philosophy, and one most of us sometimes wish we could follow. But as much as he wishes he could follow his own philosophy, he keeps meeting people who need his help, and something in his character won't allow him to let the needy people walk away without hope. So he frequently agrees to helpothers, when he knows he is barely able to keep himself going.It must be this need to help others that holds him together since the sudden death of his wife. Even how he ended up in Sarasota, Florida is both simple and revealing; he says hewas feeling so depressed, he just got in his old car and starteddriving, and he drove until his car quit, and he had to try toget by just where it stopped. So he does as little as possible,which is serving legal papers for a law firm on an occasionalbasis, and he keeps trying to stay away from the public.But some members of the public keep needing his help, and therehe is again--helping.Author Kaminsky does a fine job with all his writing; he is oneof those people who makes it all seem easy. When it isn't.His ability to write, and especially to develop interestingcharacters, grows stronger.You need to read this one to see just how a character is developed. Most people will hate to see this story end.

Great novel. Not merely a mystery or suspense novel at all. Transcends the genre, while satisfying the requirements of crime fiction. Reader and reviewers have objected to Lew Fonesca's depressed (unlikable to these readers) state in Vengeance and Retribution. I thought Vengeance was a good novel, while Retribution had its flaws, but it was still superior to 90% of mystery/suspense fiection. Midnight Pass shows Lew still tied to the past (his wife's death), still longing to be left alone with his old Joan Crawford, John Garfield etc. movies (escape the world), but he is a man who almost in spite of himself reaches out to others and others touch him. What Kaminsky has done brilliantly in this novel (apart from his spot-on creation of in-depth characters, no matter how small their roles in the novel) is to give us a man who is evolving, changing, but not through artifcial authorial manipulation, but by an author who gives us realistic, organic growth of Fonexca. I am a big fan of Kaminsky's Russian novels--his unforgettable, brilliantly etched characters, the rich atmospher, the exciting, yet plausible, plots and the main character who ties ties it all together, Rostnikov. His Leiberman novels are good. His Toby Peters novels are entertaining and often offer insight into the human condition. But Midnight Pass surpasses any novel he has written. Read this book and fall in love with real people (good, bad and in-between) and gain profound insight into yourself, a most worthy novelistic achievement. Highly recommended. Read it slowly, immerse yourself in its subtle, yet powerful, movement and, I believe, you will be a better person for having read it. Quite simply, "read it."

Lew Fonesca is my favorite fiction character, bar none. Kaminsky has created a character who perfectly balances today's angst with yesterday's 'work, don't think' ethics. He struggles with his depression emotionally, while doing the right things physically. He hides in old movies and exercising, but is able to put those indulgences aside when needed. The mystery is solid in Midnight Pass, as in all Kaminsky books. But it's the character development of Lew Fonesca that offers several laugh-out-loud moments, and a few tears to be wiped away. The book is somewhat dark, but not in an angst-ridden way. The humor is subtle and intelligent. A top-notch book in an excellent series.