Native Nevadan Jack Ross is a private investigator who has about had it with murder and betrayal and is teetering on the edge of emotional collapse. But when called upon by a friend to help a young prostitute locate her grandfather, missing these forty years, he hits the cold trail...again. Lawrence Parker vanished after killing a man, and Ross's search for him leads into the big silence of the desert, taking him through the alleys and backstreets of Reno to the doorstep of one of Nevada's most influential families. The flicker of changing identities, the shadow of blackmail, and the threat of sudden violence tail the private eye as he traces a tangle of family ties to the big silence at its center.

The Big Silence

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Schopen, Bernard

Mystery

Mysterious Pr

The Desert Look

Warner Books, Incorporated

Ross Macdonald (pseudonym of Kenneth Millar) wrote some two dozen detective novels, among them the popular series featuring Southern California private detective Lew Archer. In THE MOVING TARGET (1949), THE DROWNING POOL (1950), and THE UNDERGROUND MAN (1971) Macdonald raised American detective fiction to a more sophisticated level, capturing an audience of more cultured and mature readers and broadening the expressive possibilities of the genre. Like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, this accomplished American writer has garnered critical acclaim: he was honored in Great Britain with the Golden Dagger Award in 1965 and in America with the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and the Popular Culture Award of Excellence in 1974. Bernard A. Schopen focuses on the manner as well as the matter in Macdonald's narrative art, analyzing the development of central themes like abandonment, victimization, and the sources of human evil. His study provides an overview of the American detective novel, placing the genre within the broader tradition of the American novel and assessing the artistic contribution of Macdonald's works. Schopen demonstrates how Macdonald transformed American detective fiction into a form that could give readers both the pleasure of a detective story and the psychological and artistic complexity of a novel.

Ross Macdonald (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Twayne Pub

This novel follows native Nevadan Jack Ross, a private investigator who has about had it with murder and betrayal and is teetering on the edge of emotional collapse. But when called upon by a friend to help a young prostitute locate her grandfather, missing these forty years, he hits the cold trail…again. Lawrence Parker vanished after killing a man, and Ross’s search for him leads into the big silence of the desert, taking him through the alleys and backstreets of Reno to the doorstep of one of Nevada’s most influential families. The flicker of changing identities, the shadow of blackmail, and the threat of sudden violence tail the private eye as he traces a tangle of family ties to the big silence at its center. An eclectic mix of characters and twisting plot will keep you guessing until the last page.

The Big Silence (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

United States

University of Nevada Press

Reno private investigator Jack Ross has been in the desert for six months when his respite is interrupted by television reporter Miranda Santee. She need's Jack help to solve a story. Miranda has an old photograph of two Las Vegas showgirls who allegedly robbed a mobster of one million dollars thirty years earlier. One of the women is dead, the other missing. Only one piece of the story can pull Ross out of the desert—the dead showgirl was his mother. Now, the man who always believed his mother’s death was an accident must find out if she was murdered.

The Desert Look (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

In this third Jack Ross mystery, the Reno private eye is hired by iris-eyed Patsy McLeod to resume a case abandoned as hopeless eighteen years earlier—the search for her missing teenage daughter Heather. This time, Ross’s investigation leads him from a failed ranch in the desert north of Reno to Sacramento’s porno film industry, from the Lake Tahoe homes of the wealthy and powerful to the cramped offices of Berkeley’s activist community. On the way, he uncovers layers of deception, greed, corruption, sorrow—and murder.
Ross also encounters Martha Reedy, a Berkeley-based P.I. who is as dogged about finding Heather as Ross, but for different reasons. Both are used to working solo but find their paths hopelessly intertwined.
The Iris Deception offers an irresistibly engaging story set against the implacable beauty of the desert and the booming urban sprawl of contemporary Reno, populated by arresting characters as unique to the Nevada scene as they are universally, fallibly human. Western Literature Series.

The Iris Deception (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Hired by a young prostitute to find her long-missing grandfather, Reno private eye Jack Ross tracks the cold trail across the deserts and back alleys of the city to one of Nevada's most influential families

MYSTERIOUS PRESS

Newswoman Miranda Santee lures former Reno private eye Jack Ross out of retirement with a thirty-year-old mystery--what happened to two Vegas show girls, one of whom is Ross's mother, who embezzled thousands of dollars from a mobster and disappeared

Norman "Fats" Rangle, an ex-deputy sheriff, operates a horse stabling and excursion business with his brother and sister-in-law on their family ranch in the small rural community of Blue Lake, a few hours outside of Las Vegas. But fate has other plans for him when, high on a southern Nevada mountain range, Fats discovers the wreckage of a plane that crashed two years earlier. Although he reports his find to the sheriff, he does not disclose that someone had already been to the crash site-evidence that Fats deliberately destroyed. Soon, Fats is tracking back and forth between Las Vegas and Blue Lake in a search for a missing cousin, a briefcase full of cash, and finally, for a killer. Along the way, Fats also begins to understand that he's searching for himself and his place in a rapidly changing West. Angry and alienated, Fats distrusts everyone he meets, from sleaze-merchants and political power brokers to two women: one he wants to believe in, a retired judge; and one, a police sergeant, he can't quite believe isn't deceiving him. After all, in this Nevada, corruption is a given. Everybody lies. Much is uncertain-motives, loyalties, affections. But in Drowning in the Desert, one thing is certain: water is a precious resource that can both kill and be killed for.

Drowning in the Desert: A Nevada Noir Novel (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Ken Knecht, middle aged widower and recently retired casino executive, comes to London with a group sponsored by the University of Nevada. Solitary and dispirited since the death of his wife, Ken slowly begins to respond to the great city, its history and art and music, museums and theaters. The apostate son of a Lutheran minister, Ken is moved by visits to various London churches to a consideration of his life. Opening to some of the other Nevadans, he finds himself in love with a charming if perplexing woman. Tracing this affair, "Church-going" rides the rhythms of Comedy of Manners, even as it raises large issues: love sacred and secular, art high and low, and faith human and religious.

Church-going

Literary

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

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Books by Schopen, Bernard

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schopen, Bernard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Big Silence

The Desert Look

Ross Macdonald (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

The Big Silence (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

The Desert Look (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

The Iris Deception (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

The Big Silence

The Desert Look

Drowning in the Desert: A Nevada Noir Novel (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Church-going