Even with a left leg shattered by a drug dealer's bullet and a medical retirement from the Detroit Police Force, former homicide captain Ed McAvoy feels he’s too young to be put out to pasture. True, he thinks, being Police Chief of Peekamoose Heights, a quiet, sleepy little village in New York’s Catskills, will be a far cry from what he has been used to, but it still will be police work¯his first love. Besides, McAvoy reasons, the chief's job will also afford him the opportunity to pursue his second love¯trout fishing. With the slower pace in the Catskills, being Chief of Police in Peekamoose Heights will be sort of like running a country club, or so he thinks. After all, how much crime can there be? Some occasional petty theft, maybe a little vandalism, perhaps a few drunk-and-disorderly incidents? And every so often, he figures, someone might die¯but, then, it probably will be an old person whose time has just run out, or a victim of an unfortunate accident.
McAvoy soon discovers that his skills as a homicide detective will not atrophy from lack of use in Peekamoose Heights. Murder, as it turns out, is an equal-opportunity crime that not only resides in large bustling cities like Detroit, but in sleepy little Catskill villages like Peekamoose Heights as well.
In Stream of Death, the first book in the Ed McAvoy Mystery Series, the famed Isabela Pendant disappears amid a hail of machine-pistol bullets during the closing days of WWII in Sicily. When it temporarily resurfaces in Detroit after fifty-some years, six people are murdered. Now, four years later, a dog has dug it up in the woods near McAvoy’s peaceful Catskill village of Peekamoose Heights.
Excerpt
Tony had never witnessed his father in such a distressed state. This was a capo supremo. This man had smilingly and unflinchingly opened the car door for Jimmy Hoffa in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox back in July of 1975 and had climbed in beside the ex-union boss. This man had taken the helm of the Detroit crime family after the death of Joseph Zerilli and had held it together, calling the shots for organized crime in Southeastern Michigan. But now, this same man, after reading a simple newspaper article, had been transformed from a fearsome Godfather into a frail old grandfather.
“Papa?” Tony asked softly as he uncurled himself from the chair and put his feet on the floor.
His father didn’t answer and continued to hold the paper in front of him, rereading the article.
Tony tried again, a bit louder this time. “Papa? What is it?”
But Sal Merlino shot him a stern look and gave the boy an admonishing waggle of his finger. Both men remained silent at their stations—Salvatore Merlino, standing motionless by the side of the desk, and Antonio Gianelli, sitting on the edge of his chair.
When Vittorio finally finished reading and brought the newspaper down from his face, he did not even acknowledge the other two men’s presence, acting as if he were alone in his office. He simply withdrew a pair of scissors from the center desk drawer, slowly cut the article from the newspaper, then proceeded to smooth it out in front of him on the desk blotter.
Only when he had finished did Vittorio Gianelli look up at his advisor, then over at his son. And as the old man turned his icy gaze from one to the other he tapped the newspaper clipping with his forefinger and hissed out one solitary word. “Vendetta!”
Professional Reviews
Inner Passages Book Review
Inner Passages Book Review
By Carl Brookins
Stream of Death by Bill Stackhouse
Poisoned Pen Press
info(at)poisonedpenpress.com
$23.95 - Hardbound
ISBN 1-890208-56-6
One of the difficult things for an author to accomplish is to evoke sympathy for evil characters. Author Bill Stackhouse accomplishes this very well in a novel that takes readers on an emotionally bumpy ride from Sicily in 1943 to New York's Catskills, to Detroit, Michigan and then back to Sicily today. That we come to care in some dimension about them, adds a richness to an already highly textured novel.
Disparate elements are judiciously combined in this engaging and emotionally satisfying story. We have a fine specimen of a yellow Labrador retriever, several avid fishermen ranging in age from fourteen to over seventy, assorted parents, townsfolk, police personnel and yes, a mafioso or two.
The well-written mystery thriller combines the best elements of both as does this story. From brutal murder, theft, and resulting efforts to satisfy honor, to the trials and emotions of parenting; from the idyllic and well-described rural communities of upstate New York, where this novel is mostly set, to the urban jungle of Detroit, the novel has a broad and varied sweep. In these settings Stackhouse brings his characters to vibrant life. He introduces the reader to obsessed mafiosos, several refreshing small town policemen, a couple of very special characters, a nice family and a delightful young teenage boy.
Throughout, all these characters are carefully drawn and they remain true to readers' expectations. It's refreshing to find a book in which one meets the usual professions represented without the stereotypical fatal flaws dropped in just to move the story forward. People make incorrect deductions, but they do it because of a lack of adequate information, not because they are stupid; a policeman talks out of turn to a reporter, with unintended consequences, but he doesn't do it because he can't or won't follow directions. Even the bad guys are not stupid.
Stream of Death is a fine example of modern crime fiction from a good press and Stackhouse deserves a wide audience. I look forward to more adventures with police chief Ed MacAvoy.
Oneonta Star Book Review
The Daily Star - Oneonta, New York
By Linda Latham Wilson
Stream of Death by Bill Stackhouse
Poisoned Pen Press
info(at)poisonedpenpress.com
$23.95 - Hardbound
ISBN 1-890208-56-6
My view of the modern mystery novel is jaundiced, particularly if it is a police procedural. What I expect to encounter in today’s detective fiction is a predictable plot and a protagonist who is either too seedy or too glitzy to engage sympathetic attention. Also, the villain may be complex and interesting, but supporting characters are often weak and lack dimension.
However, in Stream of Death, Bill Stackhouse grips the readers attention with a technique that is almost expressionistic in its early dramatic shift of time and place. Stackhouse holds your interest with plot tension and complex believable characters.
From the protagonist, Chief Ed McAvoy, to an elderly eccentric only mentioned in conversation, you meet characters so real you want to meet them or strenuously want to avoid them.
The book opens in World War II Sicily. Patton’s Seventh Army has landed. A German counterintelligence officer uncovers a group of partisans and massacres them. He rewards himself by stealing a 25-carat heirloom diamond pendant from the body of a countess partisan leader. Later the countess’s young brother discovers the carnage and vows revenge. He is inducted into the re-forming ranks of Mafiosi.
If the plot appears derivative, noble youth joins Mafia to avenge family honor, Stackhouse surprises the reader with a profound shift in story line.
A present-day Huck Finn, Danny Henderson, is lounging on the bank of a Catskill stream after catching his creel limit. Danny has a lunch basket packed by his pub-owning gourmet cook uncle. For companionship he has two elderly flyfishermen and his Lab. Over several months a real camaraderie has developed between Danny and his older companions, Harvey and Matt.
Disparate plot elements come together when Danny’s Lab digs up a pouch on Harvey’s property containing the 25-carat diamond liberated from the Sicilian countess more than a half a century before.
The lead character, Chief of Police Ed McAvoy, dates Danny’s mom. McAvoy came out of retirement as a detective dealing with big-city crime bosses to head a supposedly quiet village police department. McAvoy is paunchy, likable and plausible. When one of the crimelords McAvoy dealt with back in Detroit shows up only a county away in a retirement compound for elderly dons, it is natural for the chief to take a lead in the case.
Stackhouse plays out the plot as a flyfisherman plays out his line, casting now here and now there. The reader is hooked.
One of Danny’s fishing friends, Harvey DuMont, is dragged from the Esopus Creek by the local Episcopal Priest. DuMont is nearly dead of a shotgun blast. He lives long enough to make a confession.
From this point the plot becomes so intriguing, the action so intense, the reader is compelled to finish the novel in one sitting but longs to draw out the pleasure of such a well-crafted mystery.
Stream of Death is Bill Stackhouse’s first novel. If leaves you longing for more: perhaps an Ed McAvoy series.
Stackhouse is a scriptwriter for a multimedia production firm. he lives in Big Cove, AL, but one suspects he has visited the Catskills more than once, fishing our streams and roaming our villages.
Crimestalker Casebook Book Review
A Crimestalker Casebook Book Review
by Andrew McAleer
Stream of Death: An Ed McAvoy Mystery
By Bill Stackhouse
ISBN 1-890208-56-6
$23.95, Cloth, 226 pp.
Poisoned Pen Press
Bill Stackhouse’s Stream of Death is an excellent and original debut novel which blends the hard-boiled and softer elements of the crime fiction genre.
This nifty hardcover introduces Chief Ed McAvoy, head of the police in a Catskills community in New York. While out fly-fishing McAvoy discovers a corpse and nearby, a Sicilian family heirloom that was stolen during WWII. To complicate matters, a Mafia Don, whose sister owned the heirloom, wants the heirloom back and McAvoy is left to unravel the mess.
Although this is Stackhouse’s debut he’s no novice. He has written plays and scripts including training films for NASA. The author knows his history, his upstate New York, and his pubs. The fishing scenes are so authentic readers may be unable to resist the urge to pack sunscreen.
Stackhouse credits Nero Wolfe creator, Rex Stout—America’s Conan Doyle—as being one of his early influences. But readers expecting a complete re-hash of Stout’s material may be disappointed. This author has developed his own voice and setting, yet like Stout he’s detailed where it counts, he’s well paced, and his characters are round not flat. You know Stackhouse has been there because his words take you there.
Stream of Death upholds Poisoned Pen’s tradition of “Publishing Excellence in Mystery.” The field of crime literature is already indebted to Bill Stackhouse for introducing Chief Ed McAvoy.
--Andrew McAleer is the editor of Crimestalker Casebook and the author of Appearance of Counsel.
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