The True Detective by Theodore Weesner (1987, Hardcover)

The True Detective
by Theodore Weesner
Publisher: Summit Books
Copyright 1987

Theodore Weesner's spectacular first novel, The Car Theif, was praised for its "compelling narrative," and for "the perfect transparency of Weesner's style" (Harper's), as well as for it's "lyrical grit" (Newsweek).  And Joyce Carol Oates has written of "Weesner's quiet, patient, almost unnerving talent."  Now, The True Detective, "Weesner's subtle realism explores a shocking subject with large resources of knowledge and sensitivity" (William H. Pritchard) as he tells the deceptively simple story of a crime that shatters a small New England town.

The true detective is Gil Dulac, a French Canadian moved to New Hampshire.  Married and childless, a policeman for twenty-six years, Dulac believes in doing things right, in being fair-minded and open to change.  He is a thoughtful, decent man, given as much to looking back at this time in his life as to looking ahead.  Few things distress him more than policemen surrendering to cynicism.

It is against this background, on a Saturday evening, that a twelve-year-old boy, walking home, is picked up by a desperate twenty-two-year-old college student who, earlier that afternoon, viewed an X-rated film and who is also on the run from at least one failed sexual encounter.  The abduction sets in motion an acting out of one of the most intriguing issues of our times, forcing on Dulac exactly the kind of crime he had hoped never to have occur in his town.  "In the sixties into the seventies it was drugs," one policeman remarks.  "Now it's sex everywhere, and what used to be the crime of the century has become the crime of the month."  Dulac faces what his counterparts in larger cities have been facing for years, and unfolding before him are parts of a puzzle he is called upon to pursue, examine, and understand.  Is there a relationship between pornography and criminal behavior?  Has a new pathology come into existence?

The True Detective brilliantly explores a contemporary crime and the issues it raises about pornography and violence against women and children, while bringing to the subject the care and insight often lacking in the national debate.  Theodore Weesner tells his tale from the points of view of the victim, his mother and brother, the criminal, and, especially, the investigator -- an ordinary person working to sort out his professional and personal responses to a particularly disturbing crime, even as it means looking into his own heart for evidence.  What The True Detective offers, above all, is the tension of a thriller and the substance of a major novel.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  Dust cover.  Pages may be tanning and discolored from age.  Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the front endpaper.  Dust cover and dust cover flaps are tanning from age and show a bit of edge wear.

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