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Tony Lowell #1
Hour of the Manatee
She calls him a "hippie deadbeat."
He thinks she's a "hard-nosed yuppie."
But they need each other to catch a killer from the past.
Tony Lowell is a shaggy 1960s dropout, ex-hotshot press photographer and occasional P.I. In a shack on Florida's sleepy mangrove-fringed Gulf Coast he plays Beatles, reads Zen, and restores an old sailboat.
Detective Lena Bedrosian is ultra-1990s--a brilliant by-the-book cop who works hard, lives clean, wears a Halston suit, and cuts right through chauvinism with her razor-sharp tongue.
Lowell and Bedrosian detest each other, until the murder of Lowell's latest client--an elderly housekeeper about to blow the lid off a 1966 drowning--pitches them both into the blueblood enclave of Palm Coast Harbor. Together, they'll dodge the FBI, hunt out witnesses who turn up as worm food, and get sucked into a quarter-century of power-house family secrets, a Supreme Court scandal, and a killer political hurricane that's getting ready to blow them away.
He thinks she's a "hard-nosed yuppie."
But they need each other to catch a killer from the past.
Tony Lowell is a shaggy 1960s dropout, ex-hotshot press photographer and occasional P.I. In a shack on Florida's sleepy mangrove-fringed Gulf Coast he plays Beatles, reads Zen, and restores an old sailboat.
Detective Lena Bedrosian is ultra-1990s--a brilliant by-the-book cop who works hard, lives clean, wears a Halston suit, and cuts right through chauvinism with her razor-sharp tongue.
Lowell and Bedrosian detest each other, until the murder of Lowell's latest client--an elderly housekeeper about to blow the lid off a 1966 drowning--pitches them both into the blueblood enclave of Palm Coast Harbor. Together, they'll dodge the FBI, hunt out witnesses who turn up as worm food, and get sucked into a quarter-century of power-house family secrets, a Supreme Court scandal, and a killer political hurricane that's getting ready to blow them away.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
About the author
E.C. Ayres
9 books5 followersE. C. (Gene) Ayres has a long and eclectic history as a writer, filmmaker, columnist and film critic in New York, Florida, and Hollywood, writing for Harper’s Magazine, Running Times, Worldwatch Magazine, PBS, various newspapers, commercial television and animation studios, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers.
Following upon the early success of his mysteries, Ayres spent much of the next decade researching a forthcoming book about Shakespeare, then accepted a position for three years living and working in China as a "Foreign Expert," teaching English at a major state university in Harbin. His book on these adventures, Inside the New China, is now available wherever books are sold.
His award winning Tony Lowell Mystery series is now back in publication after a decade with his fifth novel of this series, the new environmental thriller Day of the Red Tide.
He lives and works in Seattle.
Following upon the early success of his mysteries, Ayres spent much of the next decade researching a forthcoming book about Shakespeare, then accepted a position for three years living and working in China as a "Foreign Expert," teaching English at a major state university in Harbin. His book on these adventures, Inside the New China, is now available wherever books are sold.
His award winning Tony Lowell Mystery series is now back in publication after a decade with his fifth novel of this series, the new environmental thriller Day of the Red Tide.
He lives and works in Seattle.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 21, 2015
Not recommended. I bought this book when it first hit paperback in the mid-1990s and for some reason never got around to reading it until now. It's awkwardly written, with stilted dialogue and a plot that meanders to an illogical conclusion. The novel -- the author's first mystery featuring ex-photographer-turned-detective Tony Lowell of Florida -- features one great scene, a sea chase through a storm, as well as some nice local color as he describes scenery on both the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic coast. But the book drags both before and after that scene. The author also appears not to understand how things work in real life -- for instance, the unlikelihood of a state court judge being picked for a U.S. Supreme Court position, or what happens when a dead body is discovered. What's worse, in the end, the killer or killers don't really get their comeuppance. I won't be wasting my time with any of the authors' other Lowell novels.
October 8, 2016
This book reminds me of the John D. MacDonald series with Travis McGee.
The main character feels real and the details are believable.
There are parts where the plot moves a little slowly, but I often am impatient!
I like stories that transport me to a different place and entertain me. This book did both and I didn't anticipate everything before it happened. That's what I want in a book and I will look for his other books in the series.
The main character feels real and the details are believable.
There are parts where the plot moves a little slowly, but I often am impatient!
I like stories that transport me to a different place and entertain me. This book did both and I didn't anticipate everything before it happened. That's what I want in a book and I will look for his other books in the series.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews