The Man Who Never Returned

by Peter Quinn

Overview

Peter Quinn’s The Man Who Never Returned is a noir-ish, stylized detective narrative set in 1950s New York. It follows Fintan, a retired detective turned private investigator who has been given the job of finding Judge Crater, who just went missing in 1930. Based on a real story, it is quite an intriguing tale that was even more so for people living at the time. The famous missing-person case is comparable to the Amelia Earhart missing-person case, though it could have been an even more interesting one. It was alleged that the missing judge may have had information about underhanded dealings in the New York judiciary. It was believed that if such information came to light, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, would have had a hard time becoming the president of the United States. There were also rumors that the judge, who was a known ladies’ man, had either decided to disappear or had fallen afoul of the mafia. Featuring hardboiled characters and a beautiful re-creation of New York from the ’50s, it is quite a compelling read.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823297979
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Series:	The Fintan Dunne Trilogy
Pages:	333
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

Gabriel Byrne

I read Peter Quinn's novel The Man Who Never Returned. It is an utterly compelling story with a charismatic flawed protagonist in Finton Dunne. 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.

William Kennedy

In The Man Who Never Returned, Peter Quinn shapes a tantalizing tale around the enduring mystery of Judge Joseph Force Crater, whose disappearance remains a major mystery. Quinn knows New York and its politics better than anyone. The talk and the story are as sharp and hard-edged as they city they embody. This is noir fiction at its finest.

James Patterson

Peter Quinn just might make it into the history books himself. He is perfecting, if not actually creating, a genre you could call the history-mystery. The Man Who Never Returned is a dazzling story by a fine writer. Fintan Dunne is a memorably hero who you want to meet again & again.

Thomas Kelly

The Man Who Never Returned is a winner. A masterful and evocative tale, set in a beautifully rendered 1950's New York, it combines true crime with vivid imagining. This is that rare book: A first-rate thriller that seamlessly weaves together page-turning narrative with richly detailed characters whose motivations—complex, suspect, hidden—always ring true. (Thomas Kelly, author of A Testament of Devotion)

Kevin Baker

Peter Quinn writes about the old New York the way that Allen Furst writes about Paris. The Man Who Never Returned is not only a gripping take on one of the city's most enduring mysteries, but also a world in and of itself. You may never want to leave. (Kevin Baker, author of Strivers Row)

T.J. English

Peter Quinn brings wit, panache and a deep knowledge of the Big Apple to his latest Fintan Dunne novel. The Man Who Never Returned is a taut thriller but also a meditation on life in the big city, where a well-connected municipal judge can disappear overnight and leave behind a mystery that transforms lives, confounds investigators, and - fortunately for lovers of detective fiction - provides Quinn with a fascinating plotline that fully utilizes his skills as a storyteller. (T.J. English, New York Times best-selling author of Havana Nocturne)

Editorial Reviews

In The Man Who Never Returned, Peter Quinn shapes a tantalizing tale around the enduring mystery of Judge Joseph Force Crater, whose disappearance remains a major mystery. Quinn knows New York and its politics better than anyone. The talk and the story are as sharp and hard-edged as they city they embody. This is noir fiction at its finest.—William Kennedy

Peter Quinn just might make it into the history books himself. He is perfecting, if not actually creating, a genre you could call the history-mystery. The Man Who Never Returned is a dazzling story by a fine writer. Fintan Dunne is a memorable hero who you want to meet again & again.—James Patterson

This is the rarest of books, one that hooks you on the first page and doesn't unhook you on the last page ­ you wind up going over the whole story in your head for days, trying to figure out where history stops and fiction begins. Absolutely beguiling.—Robert Littell

A masterful and evocative tale, set in a beautifully rendered 1950's New York, that combines true crime with vivid imagining. This is that rare book: A first-rate thriller that seamlessly weaves together page-turning narrative with richly detailed characters whose motivations—complex, suspect, hidden—always ring true.—Thomas Kelly

From the Publisher

This is the rarest of books, one that hooks you on the first page and doesn't unhook you on the last page ­ you wind up going over the whole story in your head for days, trying to figure out where history stops and fiction begins. Absolutely beguiling.

Robert Littell

Peter Quinn just might make it into the history books himself. He is perfecting, if not actually creating, a genre you could call the history-mystery. The Man Who Never Returned is a dazzling story by a fine writer. Fintan Dunne is a memorably hero who you want to meet again & again.

James Patterson

A masterful and evocative tale, set in a beautifully rendered 1950's New York, that combines true crime with vivid imagining. This is that rare book: A first-rate thriller that seamlessly weaves together page-turning narrative with richly detailed characters whose motivations—complex, suspect, hidden— always ring true.

Thomas Kelly

In The Man Who Never Returned, Peter Quinn shapes a tantalizing tale around the enduring mystery of Judge Joseph Force Crater, whose disappearance remains a major mystery. Quinn knows New York and its politics better than anyone. The talk and the story are as sharp and hard-edged as they city they embody. This is noir fiction at its finest.

William Kennedy

Freely mixing history, mystery, and novelistic license, Quinn offers a noir-ish tale of Tammany Hall politics, sex, crime, Broadway moguls, and cops, populated by more than a dozen interesting characters...Quinn's rich, insightful, evocative descriptions of New York, both in Crater's time and in 1955, will certainly please fans of historical crime novels.

Booklist

The nonstop sizzle of two new historical novels set in Manhattan makes them strong candidates for the beach this summer.
— Round-up of books about New York government

The New York Times

A novel that suggests a fictional resolution to a historical mystery. The disappearance of New York's Judge Joe Crater in 1930 sparked speculation for decades that has never completely dissipated. After a restaurant dinner one evening, he stepped into a taxi and was never seen again. Was he a murder victim, silenced because he was about to expose the corruption that had bought his appointment? Was he a possible embarrassment who could derail the presidential ambitions of New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt? Was he a womanizer who fell afoul of a spurned lover or perhaps a lover's mate? Maybe there was even someone who had designs on Crater's wife and wanted him out of the way. Or perhaps he vanished for reasons of his own. All of these explanations are possible, some even plausible, within the fourth novel by Quinn (Looking for Jimmy: A Search for Irish America, 2007, etc.), a former New York publishing executive and political speechwriter. Though the author plainly knows the lay of the land through experience and research, the framing seems overcomplicated. The novel takes place on the 25th anniversary of the judge's disappearance, when a Rupert Murdoch-like journalism mogul hires detective Fintan Dunne (from Quinn's Hour of the Cat, 2005) to reopen the case. The publisher's heavily bankrolled interest seems something of a mystery to both the detective, who had been uneasily retired, and the reader. The judge never makes an appearance in the novel, except through the recollection of others, and almost all of the characters are fictional, with the notable exception of the judge's wife (or widow). "As long as people are interested in sex, crime, politics and the big city, Crater will continue to be of interest," explains an "Author's Note." But since the detective doesn't enter the picture until 25 years after the disappearance, most of his research comes from reading. Thus, despite the obligatory interludes of sex and violence, the reader spends much of the book looking over the protagonist's shoulder at what the detective is reading. This hybrid of mystery and history builds a compelling case but sets a leisurely pace in the process. . . .

Kirkus Reviews