The Lime Pit

Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition: a loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch. He's unable to look away from the world's corruption-and unable to avoid trying to do something about it. His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. She's not very pretty or bright or engaging … she doesn't have much to offer at all. So when she disappears, it's all the more disturbing for Stoner-who knows what can happen to girls that nobody wants. And he's got a sick hunch that he knows what happened to Cindy Ann, right across the Cincinnati border. Stoner's hunches are almost always on the money-and they rarely feature happy endings.
"Rough, vivid, and impressive."


"Harry Stoner of Cincinnati is a welcome addition to the Archer/Spenser/McGee descendants of Philip Marlowe; Valin works a fresh, unmannered variation on that familiar downbeat, dourly amused narrating voice. A...successful debut."