Nervous Laughter - Softcover

Earl Emerson's acclaimed series about Seattle private investigator Thomas Black is much beloved by readers and critics. And with justification. (These novels, running the gamut from THE RAINY CITY to the just-issued CATFISH CAF, are among my all-time favorite detective tales, and I'm not just saying that because I'm Earl's editor.) But I don't know any other crime novelist who amasses such fervent praise from his peers. It would be a crime to call Earl Emerson merely a "writer's writer." But there sure are a lot of talented authors who revere him. To wit . . .

Aaron Elkins: "In every book he tries something new, and he always comes up a winner. In the best tradition of American crime fiction, Emerson is a master of witty dialogue; clever, complex plotting; and lucid, meaty prose."

Robert Crais: "Earl Emerson writes with the richness and grace of a poet, evincing a quality of phrase and nuance that elevates the genre."

Ann Rule: "Earl Emerson and Thomas Black only get better and better! Earl Emerson has taken his place in the rarefied air of the best of the best!"

'Nuff said.

--Joe Blades, Associate Publisher

ed to rank among the best of the new generation of American private eye writers."
--Chicago Sun-Times

Thomas Black hits P.I. pay dirt when he shadows a alleged philanderer to a tryst. But instead of two illicit lovers, he finds two bodies, an apparent murder-suicide. The dead man's grieving widow doesn't believe her late husband pulled the trigger--on his lover or himself.

Everyone--including Black's own sexy client--seems to be hiding something. Maybe the name of the murdered man's equally dead girlfriend, Bea Hindenburg, should have warned Black that this case was destined to crash and burn. . . .

"Emerson's sense of creating lean plot and dialogue improves with each book."
--The Seattle Times