The Last Nightingale

Informationen zum Autor Anthony Flacco is the author of  The Hidden Man !  The Last Nightingale ! and two nonfiction books:  A Checklist for Murder  and  Tiny Dancer . He began his writing career as a staff writer at several prominent Chicago theaters. He was selected for the highly prestigious American Film Institute fellowship in screenwriting and received his MFA in screenwriting in 1992. He was the recipient of the AFI Paramount Fellowship Screenwriting Award for his script  The Frog's Legacy ! and was selected as a winner of the Walt Disney Studios Screenwriting Fellowship. He then spent a year writing for the Touchstone Pictures division. Anthony is a member of the Writers Guild of America! Mystery Writers of America! and the International Thriller Writers organization. He lives on Bainbridge Island off the coast of Seattle. Klappentext This exhilarating historical debut novel in the tradition of Caleb Carrs "The Alienist" is set in the heart of a disaster--the 1906 San Francisco earthquake--that sill reverberates a century later. CHAPTER ONE Wednesday, April 18, 1906 5:12 a.m. The First Shock Wave Randall Blackburn’s muscled frame did not strain at the long uphill hike, even though the route led from his policeman’s beat in the waterfront district all the way back to the City Hall Station. At thirty-two years of age, he was able to power his long legs up the steep terrain with such speed that he could leave his beat at five in the morning, traverse more than a dozen blocks uphill, plus a few short connecting streets, and still be at his desk with enough time to jot down a brief nightly report and quit the shift by six. The strenuous hiking routine usually helped to calm him down after a long night. This morning, it barely had any effect. He was coming off of an unusually rough beat patrolling the “Barbary Coast” district, whose grand name was a façade for a strip of bottom-feeder saloons and dead-end flophouses down near the waterfront. The whole night had been filled with more violent rampage and general disturbance than he had ever seen on a  single shift. He spent most of his shift dodging punches from drunken gamblers and avoiding knife blades flashed by syphilitic whores. Their mania was contagious among them all night long and more so with every passing hour. He had never gotten used to the place, even though the dangerous foot patrol assignment was routinely meted out to him by his station chief. Blackburn realized that the continual Barbary Coast beat was intended as some sort of an ongoing affront to him, and that it was being done for the benefit of the rank-and-file officers. He just didn’t have any good ideas as to what to do about it. His reputation as a widower who was far too obsessive in his police work naturally pleased the upper brass, but it also placed a lot of pressure on fellow officers: men with families, lives away from the job. Then some bright soul up in the command office figured out that with Blackburn’s overactive code of ethics, he would work just as hard in the dangerous district as he did anywhere else. And so week after week, the dreaded assignments sent a morale-soothing message to the rank and file: Don’t worry about Sergeant Blackburn, no matter how much of a fanatic he might be. Look at where he is. Nothing matters unless the right people like you. While he strode along the sidewalk, Blackburn tried to tell himself that the real reason he constantly drew the graveyard shift and the Barbary Coast assignments was because of his superior physical capability. But a voice in his head accused him of being the author of his own predicament. The back of his neck tightened at the unwelcome truth of it. On any night, it was a relief to leave the district behind at the end of a shift. That was especially true this morning; it had been a real “ladies’ night” along the Barbary Coast, and between th...

Product details

• Authors: Anthony Flacco
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 12.06.2007
• EAN: 9780812977578
• ISBN: 978-0-8129-7757-8
• No. of pages: 258
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 210 mm x 13 mm
• Series: William Monk; William Monk
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense