Dry Bones

by Peter Quinn

Overview

Dry Bones, the third novel of the Fintan Dunne series by Peter Quinn, follows Fintan, who works for the OSS, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The novel is set during World War II, when Fintan teams up with several of his colleagues working to rescue several intelligence officers who had been fighting the Nazis inside Czechoslovakia. Things go awry and the team soon uncovers a huge conspiracy that may change the course of their careers and their lives. After the end of the war, many of his colleagues have bad things happen to them. The common thing about his friends who either go missing or end up dead is that they were trying to unearth the mystery of an infamous doctor who had gone missing. It seems the CIA is determined to ensure that what happened to the infamous doctor who had made his name experimenting on prisoners of war remained a secret.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823297931
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Series:	The Fintan Dunne Trilogy
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Peter Quinn is a novelist, political historian, and foremost chronicler of New York City. He is the author of Looking for Jimmy: A Search for Irish America and a trilogy of historical detective novels.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Peter Quinn:

"Quinn knows New York and its politics better than anyone. This is noir fiction at its finest." --William Kennedy

"Gripping from the first page to the last, Peter Quinn creates a unique and utterly believable world, part history, part fiction. He is an enviably wonderful writer." --Gabriel Byrne

"A Gotham version of Philip Marlowe." --Chicago Tribune

Editorial Reviews

Peter Quinn is a poet and an historian and one of our finest storytellers. He sits at the fireside of the American imagination. He can carve mystery out of mystery. The work is generous and agile and profound.—Colum McCann

From the Publisher

Ten Top Books of the Year” (2013)

Commonweal

An intelligent and exciting historical thriller...

The Wall Street Journal

Ten Top Books of the Year” (2013)

Commonweal Magazine

Dry Bones is a savvy, suspenseful tale of World War II espionage and Cold War skullduggery in which Fintan Dunne cements his place in the PI pantheon alongside Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. Dunne can be misled and mishandled, but he can't be deterred. Every bit as unpredictable as Quinn's first two installments, this riveting conclusion to the trilogy leaves no doubt that Dunne is an ace of Spades who knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

William Kennedy

Peter Quinn is a poet and an historian and one of our finest storytellers. He sits at the fireside of the American imagination. He can carve mystery out of mystery. The work is generous and agile and profound.

Colum McCann

09/02/2013
A botched OSS operation propels Quinn’s well-constructed third thriller featuring Fintan Dunne (after 2010’s The Man Who Never Returned). Near the end of WWII, an assignment on the Eastern Front has Dunne attempting to contact Resistance fighters in Slovakia. When things go south, Dunne catches typhus and breaks an ankle. Soon afterwards, he learns from an Auschwitz survivor about ghastly experiments at that camp by a doctor nicknamed “the Blue Devil.” Thirteen years later, Dunne has settled into a career as a PI, helping to run a large firm in New York City. Slowly, however, his past creeps up on him. When Turlough Bassante, a brilliantly eccentric colleague from Dunne’s days with the OSS, resurfaces with information about the Blue Devil, Dunne pursues the connections between the Nazi war criminal and the American intelligence community. Brilliantly researched, the book’s only weakness is a halting pace that at times renders exciting plot details perplexing. Agent: Robin Straus, Robin Straus Agency. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2013-10-06
Quinn's final installment in a spy trilogy that began with Hour of the Cat (2005) and The Man Who Never Returned (2010) sends New York PI Fintan Dunne on a secret wartime mission to Slovakia to rescue OSS officers from the last gasps of Nazi aggression. Dunne and his deceptively tough partner, the poetry-spouting banker's son Dick Van Hull, barely escape Slovakia, where nothing is as it was described. A slippery chain of events exposes them to Dr. Karsten Heinz, a war criminal whose grave offenses include supervising gruesome experiments on concentration camp victims. Not only does Heinz avoid conviction, he appears to be among the many Nazi scientists and technicians being imported by the U.S. government to aid in the fight against communism. That men who were employed by Hitler to help kill millions would be awarded new careers in America is, says an outraged OSS officer, "the greatest danger we face...becoming the enemy we oppose." Jump to 1958. Working for a high-profile Manhattan security firm (complete with a smart and beautiful office assistant), Dunne comes across coded instructions to meet an OSS crony who has crucial information about Heinz's whereabouts. More old friends and foes emerge from the shadows, while Van Hull, now a drunken shadow of his old self, remains hidden with a secret of his own. Quinn writes with elegant restraint; he's a master of tone and a deft orchestrator of people and events. His portrayal of Wild Bill Donovan, controversial head of the OSS, is but one of his sure-handed transformations of reality to fiction. Gripping up to the end, the book--which takes its title from the old spiritual about everything being connected--will send readers who were new to Quinn back to his other books in the series.

Kirkus Reviews