FFB Review: The Dread Line: A Liam Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva

I have long been a fan of this series and this author. This novel came out in the fall of 2016 and I remember picking it up just before Christmas at the Plano Library on the way home from cancer treatment with Sandi. She knew that a storyline involved her beloved New England Patriots and wanted to read it after I did. That was the plan, at least. Somewhere, the Fates laughed, but I never heard them.

2017 hit and within a couple of weeks my Mom had suddenly passed. The weeks passed into months and by the summer Scott and I were packing up the apartment, clearing out the house as best as we could, and coming back here to the home I grew up in while Sandi was in the hospital and clearly slowly losing her battle. Everything from the Plano library, including this book, went back to the Haggard Branch on Coit Road.

It was some time before I got us signed up at the Lochwood Branch which is a few miles away from the house and on the land that used to hold the YMCA Branch when I was kid. Though I had made a massive list of everything I had checked out from the library, it somehow got lost in the move. With everything that had happened by that point, and the fact that losing Sandi had pretty much wrecked me, I forgot about this book. I did not think of it again util I saw it on a shelf right before the pandemic hit and grabbed it up. It has been here ever since and for one reason or another did not get read until just a couple of days ago. As is came out several years ago, it seemed to be a good choice for FFB today.   

 

As The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva begins former newspaper investigative reporter and current part time private investigator Liam Mulligan gets a phone call from his boss, Bruce McCracken. They have a new client who is not happy with the efforts of the Jamestown Police Department or the FBI. Approximately, three weeks ago there was a robbery at The Pell Savings and Trust and the branch manager, Mildred Carson, wants a meeting.

 

Mulligan goes to the meeting and learns that early in September a wealthy customer came in to access his safety deposit box. The assistant manager and the customer went into the vault, opened the relevant box, and then were confronted at gun point by someone. They were soon helpless, the jewelry gone, and the person was gone with no one else in the bank aware of anything. Mulligan asks a lot of questions and soon he has a couple of ideas though things are slowed down because the wealthy customer does not want to cooperate.

 

Things are also slowed down by the fact that somebody is going around killing local pets. In limited detail that may upset some readers, it becomes clear that somebody is setting pets, dogs specifically, on fire to kill them. Like the recent events at the bank, local police have no clues or even a possible suspect.

 

If that is not enough, McCracken and Mulligan soon also have a major and potentially lucrative client, the New England Patriots. As any football fan knows, background checks and profiles of players about to be drafted in the NFL do not show everything. Things get missed. The Patriots have a record of missing some things in recent years and do not want to make that mistake again. There is an athlete with ties to the area that the Patriots may move up in the draft to get if he is as squeaky clean as he appears. Mulligan already knows for a fact that he isn’t. The real question is, how dirty is he?

 

These three main storylines and a couple of other ones eventually coalesce together in The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva. Flashes of humor, plenty of action, and multiple mysteries make the fifth book in the series that started with Rogue Island another compelling and highly entertaining read. As noted earlier, what happens to several dogs in this book is horrific and may disturb some readers though it should also be pointed out that the descriptions are not gratuitous or excessive. Those few situations are handled very well by the author through Mulligan’s character and are not glorifying of it in any way.

 

I have been a fan of this series and The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva is highly recommended as is the series.

 

The books and my reviews in order:

Rogue Island (November 2010)

Cliff Walk (September 2012)

Providence Rag (May 2014)

A Scourge of Vipers (May 2015)

The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel (You Are Here)

 

  

The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel

Bruce DeSilva

http://www.brucedesilva.com/

A Forge Book (Tom Doherty Associates, LLC)

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765374332

September 2016

ISBN# 978-0-7653-7433-2

Hardback (also available in audio and eBook formats)

320 Pages

 

 

My reading copy came from the Downtown Branch of the Dallas Public Library System. 

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2021

Bruce DeSilva: OBITUARY FOR THE NEWSPAPER BUSINESS (The Cockeyed Pessimist Blog)

Bruce DeSilva: OBITUARY FOR THE NEWSPAPER BUSINESS  (The Cockeyed Pessimist Blog)

Guest Post by Bruce DeSilva: Illegal Sports Gambling

Guest Post by Bruce DeSilva: Illegal Sports Gambling

Review: "A Scourge Of Vipers: A Mulligan Novel" by Bruce DeSilva

The newspaper The Providence Dispatch is barely hanging on by a thread. A shadow of its former self pretty much in name only it is now owned by a media conglomerate known to all as “General Communications Holdings International” or GCHI. A media conglomerate bent on wringing out every last penny as the bottom line drives everything. Investigative reporter Liam Mulligan is quite possibly the last dinosaur as he is hanging on to his job by a thread. It has been a long time since the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and his newspaper were allowed to what they do best. These days he

has to punch a time clock and write press releases for a managing editor that never edits because everything at GCHI is sent to an “International Editing Center” in Wichita where idiots manage to screw up everything.

Every now and then he gets sent out to report on something. In this case a body that was floating in the Blackstone River above the falls in Pawtucket. That body,  as well as another one on a small plane that crashed at a nearby airport,  are just two small pieces of a very large puzzle involving gambling interests, major league sports of all types, murder, conspiracy, politics,  and more in this latest very good read from award winning author Bruce DeSilva.

Along with chronicling the end of traditional newspapers as we know them, the author takes on the hypocrisy that involves sports gambling as well as money in politics especially in the form of super PACs. While those details occasionally stray very close to the line of ranting A Scourge of Vipers the anger is very much justified in all cases for those readers that have been paying attention to the reality of all levels of government the last decade plus.

Those relevant observations do not overshadow the complex mystery at the heart of the book. Fourth in the series featuring Liam Mulligan, the read references earlier reads in the series while also representing a turning point in multiple ways for the classic wise cracking reporter. It will be very interesting to see how this series evolves going forward as it appears this one a major turning point for Liam as well as several other characters.

If you are new to the series really should read them in order starting with Rogue Island before moving on to Cliff Walk and Providence Rag.  A Scourge of Vipers is another mighty good one in the series and very well worth your time.

A Scourge Of Vipers: A Mulligan Novel

Bruce DeSilva

http://www.brucedesilva.com

Tom Doherty Associates Book (Forge)

http://www.tor-forge.com

April 2015

ISBN# 978-0-7653-7431-8

Hardback (also available in e-book and audio)

320 Pages

$25.99

Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano Texas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2015

Bruce DeSilva, Guest Author

Bruce DeSilva, Guest Author

Booking Mama: Guest Blogger: Bruce DeSilva

Booking Mama: Guest Blogger: Bruce DeSilva: I am so happy to welcome award-winning author Bruce DeSilva to my blog today. His novel A SCOURGE OF VIPERS , the fourth book in the Liam...

Review: "Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel" by Bruce DeSilva

Liam Mulligan, investigative reporter for The Providence Dispatch newspaper has come a long way since June 1992. Back then he was a young reporter working the sports beat who, by the luck of the draw and the fact that no one else was available, was forced into helping cover from the start one of the worst murder cases in the history of Rhode Island. A case that ultimately resulted in the very justified conviction of a killer who is definitively going to kill again if he ever gets out.

In the spring of 2012 that release is looking more and more likely. Not only is the killer going to get out, Mulligan probably will see that happen very soon as well as the death of his employer, The Providence Dispatch. Newspapers are a dying industry thanks to a population that either reads online or doesn't read at all. Mulligan knows the end is near every time he walks into the nearly empty newsroom and considers all the empty workstations, but looking for a new job isn't a high priority right now. Mulligan instead is focused on the case and the huge ethical dilemma it has created.  It seems increasingly clear that prison officials were fabricating charges to keep the killer behind bars beyond his original sentence because the laws passed by the legislature were never ever designed to handle this unique situation. If prison officials really could make up charges and did so the obvious implication is that they could do it again with somebody else. Where does the public’s all-encompassing right to know about corruption and other matters fit into this situation? Beyond the thorny issue of what they did, if it did happen and Mulligan and possibly other reporters write about it, all heck is going to break loose with the most likely result in a killer being released to kill again. A killer who, no doubt, is far smarter about how to do what he wants to do without getting caught than when he went in all those years ago.

Inspired by two famous Rhode Island murder cases, Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel is the third book in the very good Liam Mulligan series. While Mulligan is getting older and maybe wiser---through that is questionable--- he is certainly more and more aware of the fact that he is the last of his breed in a dying industry. The obvious question as to who is going to expose corrupt politicians and flawed government actions when newspapers are gone is one that comes up again here as well as the ethics in reporting all that one knows about a situation.

This latest in the series is another good one from author Bruce DeSilva. Shifting in time from various dates in 1989 to 2012 the complicated read features further development of many characters as well as an illustrative history of what is being lost as the newspaper industry dies before our eyes. The world has changed a lot in those years and readers are reminded of those changes as the book works its way through and increasingly suspenseful situation on various fronts. Based on real life events with names and other details fictionalized Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan novel, like the preceding two books Rogue Island and Cliff Walk, is absolutely well worth your time.

Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel

Bruce DeSilva

http://www.brucedesilva.com

Forge (A Tom Doherty Associates Book)

http://www.tor-forge.com

March 2014

ISBN #978-0-7653-7429-5

Hardback (also available in e-book)

304 Pages

$25.99

ARC was provided by the author for my use in an objective review.

Bruce DeSilva was a participant in the Sunday Sample series here on the blog back in February and you can read his piece here if you are so inclined.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2014

Via Bruce DeSilva-- Notes On A Book Tour From A Tired But Grateful Novelist

Notes On A Book Tour From A Tired But Grateful Novelist

Via Sons Of Spade--- Providence Rag (Liam Mulligan) by Bruce DeSilva

Review of the new (and in my TBR pile) book  Providence Rag (Liam Mulligan) by Bruce DeSilva

Sample Sunday: Bruce DeSilva

Another Sunday and another author whom I am honored to know and be a part of things here. Author of Rogue Island (reviewed here) and Cliff Walk (reviewed here) I was amazed and absolutely thrilled when he wanted to contribute something in advance of his new novel Providence Rag currently scheduled for release on March 11. Instead of the normal sample from a book, author Bruce DeSilva wanted to do something a little different. I was not about to say no.

Like most newspaper professionals these days, Liam Mulligan, a fictional investigative reporter at The Providence Dispatch, fears the future. 

The paper’s longtime-owners, a group of wealthy Rhode Island families who have controlled the Dispatch since the Civil War, always ran the place as a public service. For decades, they held out against the nationwide trend of local owners selling out to chains, and Mulligan has been grateful for that. But now, after too many years of declining circulation and advertising, the owners have reluctantly put the paper on the market. And the only suitor is a bottom-feeding media conglomerate that cares about nothing but the bottom line.

Mulligan is a wisecracking tough guy. Not much phases him. But he shudders when he thinks about what’s coming. For him, investigative reporting has always been a calling—like the priesthood but without the sex. But he’s in his forties now, and he knows his days as a newspaperman are numbered. He doubts he could ever be any good at anything else.

For where he sits, other metropolitan newspapers aren’t much of an option. Nearly all of them, hemorrhaging readers and revenue, have become mere shells of the vital institutions they once were. And few of them are hiring. They are laying people off. 

Television news and online news websites don’t look like much of an option either. Network television news departments, never all that great to begin with, have shriveled into irrelevance. Twenty-four-hour cable news channels spew endless loops of trivial celebrity gossip, provide soap boxes for blowhards, and poison the public discourse with partisan distortions and misinformation. And the handful of internet news websites striving to be more than propaganda organs for the left and right lack the revenue streams required to cover the news with breadth and depth. 

Mulligan, the protagonist of my Edgar Award-winning series of hardboiled crime novels, sees nothing on the horizon to replace newspapers as honest brokers of information. He’s appalled at how much damage their demise is doing to the American democracy.

If I were younger, I’d be in the same fix Mulligan is in. In recent years, I grew weary of being part of a rear-guard action and dispirited over the inevitability of the journalism’s decline. But I fought the good fight. The last major project I oversaw as a senior Associated Press editor, an investigative series about the exploitation of child gold miners in Africa, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. But five years ago, when the AP offered an early retirement package—part of its own retrenchment in the face of economic pressures—I decided it was time for a second act.

I’m a full-time novelist now, and the third novel in my Mulligan crime series, Providence Rag, will be published in hardcover and e-book editions on March 11.  The book has already received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist. 

In each Mulligan novel, my protagonist shows his grit by investigating crime and corruption in the state of his birth. In Rogue Island, he investigates an arson spree that is destroying the working class Providence, R.I., neighborhood where he was raised. In Cliff Walk, he investigates political corruption that has allowed the state’s rampant sex trade to thrive. And in Providence Rag, he and the entire state struggle with the ethical dilemma of what to do about a psychopath who is being held in prison on phony charges because he is too dangerous to be set loose. 

I want my novels to be enjoyed as suspenseful entertainment—but they are also about something more. It is my hope that as readers follow the skill and dedication with which Mulligan pursues the truth under increasingly difficult circumstances, they will gain a greater appreciation for what all of us are losing as newspapers fade into history.

Bruce DeSilva ©2014

Bruce DeSilva grew up in a tiny Massachusetts mill town where the mill closed when he was ten. He had an austere childhood bereft of iPods, X-Boxes, and all the other cool stuff that hadn’t been invented yet. I this parochial little town, metaphors and alliteration were also in short supply. Nevertheless, his crime fiction has won the Edgar and Macavity Awards; has been listed as a finalist for the Shamus, Anthony, and Barry Awards; and has been published in ten foreign languages. His short stories have appeared in Akashic Press's award-winning noir anthologies. He has reviewed books for The New York Times Sunday Book Review and Publishers Weekly, and his reviews for The Associated Press have appeared in hundreds of other publications. Previously, he was a journalist for forty years, most recently as writing coach world-wide for AP, editing stories that won nearly every major journalism prize including the Pulitzer. He and his wife, the poet Patricia Smith, live in New Jersey with two enormous dogs named Brady and Rondo.