Susan Dunlap

I was a fan of Susan Dunlap's work many many moons ago, and am glad to see she has been writing a new character driven series again. As ever, her descriptions of places (in this case—and some of her older books—San Francisco and Berkeley and the greater Bay Area, and in her older books also New Orleans, so some of my favorite places in the world) are spot on and familiar. Darcy Lott is a cool woman character I look forward to hanging out with in future books (most of which I just put on show more hold at my library). I mean...a Zen Buddhist stuntwoman? Yes please. show less

I've missed Susan Dunlap and her two series characters, private investigator Kiernan O'Shaughnessy and homicide detective Jill Smith. These soft-boiled mysteries, heavy on characterization and masterfully plotted, were books I read and savored the moment they appeared on bookstore shelves. It's been years now since I saw Susan Dunlap's name on a book, when, lo and behold, there sat A Single Eye on my inaugural trip to my town's new library. A perfect confluence of events!

A Single Eye show more introduces Darcy Lott, a Manhattan stuntwoman and a Zen practitioner, in what I hope is the first of a series. Despite her willingness to leap from cliff to cliff and fake a dangerous stumble on the far side, Darcy has one paralyzing fear: the woods. In a final effort to conquer her fear before it damns her in the macho world of stunts, she makes plans to attend a Zen sesshin in a redwood forest in northern California. A sesshin is a retreat that only the hardiest Zen practitioners are likely to undertake, with nine zazen sittings per day, subsistence on oatmeal, gruel and tea, and basic physical labor to break up the periods of staring at a wall and deep into one's self.

Even before Darcy arrives at the monastery, however, she finds herself thrust into a clash of personalities between the monastery's roshi -- its principal teacher -- and his jisha, his assistant. The roshi seems to be friendly, personable, a deep thinker who can communicate easily, while the jisha seems to be arrogant, brittle and thoughtless. And it becomes almost immediately apparent when the sesshin opens that there is a mystery in attendance as well, a mystery dating back to the opening of the monastery six years earlier: Aeneas, a star Zen pupil, disappeared.

This is a mystery that has much to tell, about Zen, about (of all things) chocolate, about the dark places in the soul. It's exquisitely plotted, with plenty of red herrings, and can keep even the most experienced mystery reader guessing right up until the bitter end.

Welcome back, Ms. Dunlap. Please write more. show less

Jill investigates the death of a chef who was mysteriously poisoned by his own soup
Until the helicopter crash, Jill Smith never knew fear. A homicide detective in the leftist enclave of Berkeley, California, she has faced down her share of thugs, thieves, and killers, but since surviving the downed helicopter, her nerves have been shot. Unwilling to submit to her anxiety, she goes back to work.
The chef and owner of Paradise, an upscale restaurant in Berkeley's so-called "Gourmet Ghetto," is show more found on the floor of his own kitchen, poisoned by the soup he was seasoning. On his way to the top of the foodie pyramid, the chef made enemies of his dishwasher, his neighbors, and Earth Man, a hippie holdout who lives on kitchen scraps. To pinpoint the killer, Jill will have to remember what it means to be fearless. show less

Series ending; leaves you a bit uneasy... is the job, and the boyfriend, gone forever? Satisfying enough for her to have found the killer, save her oddball anti-cop "friend", in spite of breaking the rules, going off on her own, following leads no one else understands?