About this item
A witty, engrossing homage to noir from National Book Award finalist Howard NormanJacob Rigolet, a soon-to-be former assistant to a wealthy art collector, looks up from his seat at an auction - his mother, former head librarian at the Halifax Free Library, is walking almost casually up the aisle. Before a stunned audience, she flings an open jar of black ink at master photographer Robert Capa's "Death on a Leipzig Balcony." Jacob's police detective fiance, Martha Crauchet, is assigned to the ensuing interrogation. In My Darling Detective, Howard Norman delivers adelivers a fond nod to classic noir, as Jacob's understanding of the man he has always assumed to be his father unravels against the darker truth of Robert Emil, a Halifax police officer suspected but never convicted of murdering two Jewish residents during the shocking upswing of anti-Semitism in 1945. The denouement, involving a dire shootout and an emergency delivery - it's the second Rigolet to be born in the Halifax Free Library in a span of three decades - is Howard Norman at his "provocative . . . haunting"* and uncannily moving best. *Janet Maslin, New York Times
About the Author
HOWARD NORMAN is a three-time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel, The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novel The Bird Artist. He is also author of the novels The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion. His books have been translated into twelve languages. Norman teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Vermont with his wife and daughter.
