A Few Dying Words

by Paula Gosling

Overview

With the summer tourists gone, the locals are ready for the Howl, the yearly Halloween festival. Events turn ugly when Sheriff Matt Gabriel's friend is crushed beneath the wheel of his vintage Corvette and dies with an unfinished--and baffling--confession on his lips. The words send Matt down a dark path to a tragic Halloween night long ago.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446404600
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/01/1996
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.72(d)

Editorial Reviews

Deft plotting and an appealing cast mark the second in Gosling's series, begun with the The Body in Blackwater Bay , set in a small Great Lakes resort town. While bracing for the Blackwater Bay's annual Howl--a traditional Halloween celebration of carnival rides and pranks--Sheriff Matt Gabriel agrees to meet with clearly agitated retired pharmacist, Tom Finnegan. While driving to the sheriff's office, however, Finnegan is run off the road. Matt reaches the older man's side before he dies and hears him whisper ``not an accident'' along with the name ``Jacky Morgan.'' Aided by his secretary, Tilly Moss, lawyer Dominic Pritchard and reporter Emily Gibbons, Matt learns that Jacky Morgan died during a Howl 30 years earlier when he went over a cliff in a barrel, an event that, ruled an accident, involved a group of the town's most important citizens. Then the subsequent murder of another man involved in Morgan's death impels Matt and his friends to determine which of the remaining participants in the earlier incident might be trying to silence the group. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The plot of Gosling's latest boils down to what the title indicates: a dying man attempts to relay a message to his friend, a sheriff who subsequently unravels its intent and finds the man's murderer. Matt Gabriel, the Blackwater (Great Lakes area) cop in question, quickly links the murder to the Halloween Howl, a local event of questionable propriety that often results in destructive pranks and that, 30 years previously, resulted in death. An attractive package, wrapped by small-town characters and tied together with the usual romantic subplots. A likely selection.

Library Journal

Blackwater Bay, a small resort town on the Great Lakes, pretty well closes down when the summer folks are gone--except for Halloween, when the locals hold a "barbeques and bonfires" event called "the Howl," when masked tricksters young, old, and middle-aged play practical jokes, create mischief, and outdo each other with crazy pranks such as painting cats and covering houses with tinfoil. Sheriff Matt Gabriel puts up with the silliness, most of which is innocent and funny. But the most recent Howl turns serious when Matt is called to investigate a nasty traffic accident that severely injures one of his old friends, Tom Finnegan. Finnegan makes a cryptic deathbed "confession" to Matt, a confession that alludes to something terrible that happened during a Howl 30 years earlier. Matt, with the help of young lawyer Dominic Pritchard, begins to investigate and soon discovers some sinister truths about Blackwater Bay's leading citizens and their not-so-innocent pasts. Good writing, an inventive plot, and a nice balance of humor and horror make this an appealing mystery but not an outstanding one. For larger collections.

Emily Melton