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Walter Satterthwait - Accustomed to the Dark

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ACCUSTOMED TO THE DARK: the fifth Joshua Croft mystery

By Walter Satterthwait

Paperback: ISBN: 0373262639 $4.99
Hardcover: ISBN: 0312145357 $21.95

Read the first two chapters of ACCUSTOMED TO THE DARK

Reviews:

Publisher's Weekly Review: September 9, 1996, page 67

Satterthwait grips his readers early, hard and fast as New Mexico PI Joshua Croft (seen before in The Hanged Man) pursues the man who shot his partner and lover, Rita Mondragon. Hours before the shooting, Ernie Martinez had escaped the nearby penitentiary, where he was serving time for previously shooting Rita and killing her husband years ago, while trying to murder Joshua. Infuriated that police did not warn them, Joshua gives chase on his own while Rita lies comatose in a Santa Fe hospital. The trail is grim. An informant who once turned in Martinez has been shot to death. A troubled bank teller has suddenly abandoned her home to help Martinez and a fellow escapee. Joshua's hasty reaction triggers deadly consequences in Denver, enraging the cops, but a computer nerd there points him toward another lead in Texas. Disbelieving reports that the fleeing felons have died in a fiery road accident near New Orleans, Joshua presses on to south Florida and a bloody showdown. Satterthwait cross-cuts smoothly from present to past, delving in depth into Joshua and Rita's relationship and the origins of the feud with Martinez. Narration and dialogue crackle with smart humor. Joshua gets strong support, especially from a mono-syllabic ex-CIA agent who collects Barbie dolls and prowls the Everglades like an alligator, silent and dangerous.

 

Book List: Nov 15, 1996, page 575

When private detective Rita Mondragon gets shot and perhaps fatally wounded by an escaped convict, Joshua Croft, Rita's friend, lover, and partner, knows he should leave the case in the hands of Santa Fe policeman Hector Ramirez. But sitting by Rita's bed and waiting for her to regain consciousness, is not Joshua's way, and both he and Hector know it. Driven by anger and adrenaline, Joshua sets out across country to find Rita's nemesis. His wild journey takes him from New Mexico to Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and finally, to Florida. Croft is an engaging character, a believer in fair play who is convinced that fairness rarely surfaces in most people. While his hard-boiled cynicism borrows from numerous hard-boiled detectives, Croft possesses a crisp, distinctive voice, which, combined with Satterthwait's sense of place and flair for plotting, produces a compelling and highly readable story.
-Stuart Miller

 

Library Journal Review : December 1996, page 150

Satterthwait sends Santa Fe private investigator Joshua Croft on an involved cross-country chase when Croft's arch-nemesis escapes from prison. Croft's personal odyssey begins when the escapee critically wounds his long-time business partner, Rita. She lies near death as Croft discovers bodies, embezzlement and disguised identities. Effective dialog, low-key humor, and quick action accompany the usual p.i./police animosity. Recommended.

Reviewed by Rex E. Klett. Mitchell Community College, LRC, Statesville, NC

 

Washington Post Book World Review: Nov 17, 1996, page 6

Hot Pursuit

Walter Satterthwait wastes no time gearing up in Accustomed to the Dark (St Martin's $21.95). Joshua Croft and his detective partner (and lover) Rita Mondragon are just finishing up a leisurely breakfast when a rifle shot lodges in Rita's brain. As she lies unconscious in a Santa Fe hospital, Joshua sets out across country in pursuit of Ernie Martinez, an escaped convict he imprisoned six years earlier for almost killing Rita. The hunt for Martinez and his companion, Luiz Lucero, a big-time drug dealer, takes Croft from Santa Fe to Denver, from Denver to Dallas, and from Dallas across Louisiana to the Florida Everglades. Along the way, there are brutal, often poignant markers of Martinez's presence: a woman shot to death, another who abandons her quiet life as a bank teller to run drugs and help the men escape. And there are other, equally startling, reminders of the wild unpredictability that makes people who they are: a madman with the wiles to maintain a computer photograph album of his neighbor's visitors, a gangster who advises mediation rather than revenge, an ex-CIA agent who collects Barbie dolls.

Though these might seem gratuitous eccentricities, Satterthwait convincingly integrates them into a gripping, charged tale of pursuit and capture that moves with unusual speed and intensity. Even a series of flashbacks to Croft's first encounters with Martinez, and his first meetings with Rita, don't' slow down the driving force that pushes this story forward. The writing is crisp, terse, thoughtful; the dialogue coarse and tender by turns; the relations of Joshua to Rita and his police friends offered with understated smoothness. Satterthwait's got a feel for the pulse of the Southwest that avoid hackneyed evocations of space and spirituality. He offers instead a more old-fashioned tale of greed, revenge and guilt.

reviewer: Paul Skenazy teaches literature and writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of James M. Cain and editor of La Mollie and the King of Tears , a posthumous novel of Arturo Islas.