Rating: 
Summary: Radio noir
Review: "2:00 Eastern Wartime" is author John Dunning's eleagic tribute to the WWII homefront, the noir mystery (maybe you'll have an image of Robert Mitchum in your head as you read the story of Jack Dulaney), and especially radio before the age of television. As you follow along with the twists and turns of the plot as Jack and his sometime girlfriend Holly adventurously try to find out who murdered Holly's father (you may not like them much--they're obsessed and self-absorbed), you'll also be swept up into the life of the mythical Jersey Shore radio station, WHAR, as the staff, with the encouragement of the station's owner, puts on radio dramas (and the author's re-creation of the way those dramas were produced is fascinating) that have relevance for the time the novel is set in--and that time is 1942, the early days of the war before it was clear that the U.S. would prevail. It was an uncertain time of gasoline rationing, German espionage (the scenes in New York City's Yorkville are especially chilling), FBI surveillance, and the rounding up of U.S. citizens of Japanese extraction, as well as the advent of daylight saving time (then called wartime, hence the title of the book). And it was a time when radio networks functioned similar to the way the "over the air" TV networks do today, producing comedies and dramas. The author not only ensnares the mystery with breathless complications (although the tacked-on "coda" seems unnecessary--the book should have had a colder ending) but he also gives you a taste, by way of his fictional radio station, of what quality radio might have been like, had it only been given the chance. But it didn't get that chance: soon the war was over and television arrived. Radio drama gave way to the dj. As Mr. Harwood, the strange visionary station owner tells Jack at one point, he fears "not that radio's greatest days will fade away but that its greatest day will never come." It never did.
Rating:
Summary: Radio noir
Review: "2:00 Eastern Wartime" is author John Dunning's eleagic tribute to the WWII homefront, the noir mystery (maybe you'll have an image of Robert Mitchum in your head as you read the story of Jack Dulaney), and especially radio before the age of television. As you follow along with the twists and turns of the plot as Jack and his sometime girlfriend Holly adventurously try to find out who murdered Holly's father (you may not like them much--they're obsessed and self-absorbed), you'll also be swept up into the life of the mythical Jersey Shore radio station, WHAR, as the staff, with the encouragement of the station's owner, puts on radio dramas (and the author's re-creation of the way those dramas were produced is fascinating) that have relevance for the time the novel is set in--and that time is 1942, the early days of the war before it was clear that the U.S. would prevail. It was an uncertain time of gasoline rationing, German espionage (the scenes in New York City's Yorkville are especially chilling), FBI surveillance, and the rounding up of U.S. citizens of Japanese extraction, as well as the advent of daylight saving time (then called wartime, hence the title of the book). And it was a time when radio networks functioned similar to the way the "over the air" TV networks do today, producing comedies and dramas. The author not only ensnares the mystery with breathless complications (although the tacked-on "coda" seems unnecessary--the book should have had a colder ending) but he also gives you a taste, by way of his fictional radio station, of what quality radio might have been like, had it only been given the chance. But it didn't get that chance: soon the war was over and television arrived. Radio drama gave way to the dj. As Mr. Harwood, the strange visionary station owner tells Jack at one point, he fears "not that radio's greatest days will fade away but that its greatest day will never come." It never did.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing Book, Amazing Writer!
Review: Dunning, where have you been all my life? From the very first words of this book, you know that you are in the hands of a master. This is the most beautifully written mystery I've ever read! The pace is leisurely, but that's all to the good. By taking its time, the book gives you the chance to really get to know the main character, Jack/Jordan, and he is one of the most compelling characters in fiction. 1940s America and life in a small-town radio station are beautifully evoked. What impressed me most is that, unlike many historical novels which seem to be a frozen slice in time with no antecedents, this book has enough references to culture and events in the 1930s that the wartime in which the book is set makes sense and has context. Jack himself, who has bummed around race tracks doing menial jobs like horse walking, seems very much a man of the 1930s Depression, rootless and scraping by, but looking for something to cling to. The mystery itself is satisfyingly complex. In fact, through most of the book, you're not even sure what the mystery is! Who is after Jack and why? I was sad to reach the end of the book, because I wanted to spend more time in this world.
Rating:
Summary: Great Period Piece
Review: I agree that the mystery in this novel was not particulary compelling. However, it is a great period piece. I very much enjoyed the authors portrayal of the era--the immediate pre-WW2 period--and the setting--the golden age of radio. A fun read.
Rating:
Summary: Dunning Makes A Great Return
Review: I am so fortunate that I acquired a signed first edition of this book, because I will treasure it for years to come. In his newest, Dunning crafts a story of a writer, caught up in a mystery due to a lost love. Stumbling through America in the war years, he manages to find a way to bring the truth to life, but along the way he finds himself in the broadcast radio game, and it is there that his talent truly comes alive. Dunning tops the story off with a coda that leaves the reader guessing as to whom Jack/Jordan finally spends the rest of his life with. I haven't given up on the return of Cliff Janeway, the "Bookman" and hope that Dunning will return to his hero in the future, but "Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime" is an outstanding read. Remembering my parents & grandparents talking about sitting around the radio for hours to listen, learn and be entertained, I always wondered about the attraction - Dunning has helped put that in perspective by giving the reader a sense of the magic that was radio during the war years in the 30's and 40's. Obviously an expert on the topic, he wraps his knowledge around a well written mystery with a hero you can really care about and an interesting cast of bit players. I am a mystery/thriller buff, and don't often come across truly great writing - the thrill is the mystery itself, the element of surprise and sometimes disaster. Dunning can do it all. He can share a mystery with his readers but the quality of his own writer's craftsmanship appears throughout the novel, and makes it come alive..."He dreamed that there was no war. Got up at three and exploded into his work, as if the answer to everything lay in some unwritten script still hidden away in his mind..."; Dunning captures the thrill and the fulfillment of being a great writer and shares it with all of us who have never known that rush. Please read "Two O'clock Eastern Wartime", you will have no regrets.
Rating: 
Summary: Long and complex historical mystery is a bit murky
Review: I like mysteries. I like spy stories. I like historical novels. I like reading about World War 2. Though I didn't know much about 1940's radio, I enjoyed reading about it too. Funny thing though, given that I like all of this, the sum of it, in the case of Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime, wasn't very much fun for me. I'm not sure why, though I think I can guess parts of it. For one thing, the plot sort of meanders along. The main character starts out in jail in California, but you get flashbacks to his life earlier, working on racetracks tending horses. He escapes from jail, and then he journeys to New Jersey, with a detour to Pennsylvania, where he finds a murdered friend. Once in New Jersey, he gets a job at a radio station, and stays there for the rest of the story, trying to figure out why an old girlfriend of his is acting so strangely. The plot takes long detours itself, into the life and culture of the radio station, and they are interesting, but they distract from the spy/mystery plot, making it almost impenetrable. A further difficulty is names. The main character, Jack Dulaney, decides he can't use his real name at the station, so for most of the book he's Jordan Ten Eyck (he made the name up out of characters in books he's admired). Turns out Holly Carnahan, the girl he's chasing, is known locally as Holly O'Hara. The author refers to Dulaney as Dulaney, or as Jordan, pretty much interchangeably throughout the book, and she's Miss O'Hara long enough that you forget what her real name is. And lastly, for whatever reason, the mystery itself was rather unsatisfying for me. The plot turned out to be less than the sum of it's parts, and so did the book, I'm afraid.
Rating:
Summary: Radio Drama Noir, with a little interference...
Review: I liked Dunning's Cliff Janeway novels, and I liked this one, although I would have preferred another Janeway, given a choice. Still, Dunning's mysteries always rise above the grocery-store paperback level, with more literary aspirations. The book is a WWII-era noir fiction historical mystery with a tie-in to old time radio drama when it wasn't quite yet old time. There are mysterious disappearances, hints of subterfuge and espionage, references to historical atrocities that have been covered-up or ignored, a few surprising scenes that are graphically macabre, and some sexual explicitness that adds nothing to the story. Dunning is a very good writer, with occasional flashes of brilliance, and the book is close enough to a great book that I feel compelled to express my frustration at its foibles. Eastern Wartime has a compelling mystery at its heart, at least it starts out that way. But it seems to get thinned out along the way, only to be resuscitated at the end. Too much sidetracking with the goings-on at a certain radio station, to the point some of the mystery atmosphere lapses for pages at a time. A flaw with all Dunning's characters is that they appear to be emotionally stilted, unable to access their feelings at times, unable to sustain emotion beyond a paragraph or two, at others. Which takes something away from their otherwise human complexity. And many of the characters are painted so vaguely that I couldn't remember who they were or what they were doing there. The "historical" atmosphere is weak, and unlike Caleb Carr's Alienist (with which it is compared on the jacket blurb), I would frequently forget that the story was taking place in another era. Another minor irritation is that Dunning can't resist taking pot-shots at the Bible and at religious faith. I'll line up with the rest who detest religious hypocrisy and duplicity in the name of God, but I resent being proselytized to the secular humanist cause. Again, these little forays add nothing to the book, and only serve to weaken the story line. Still, the mystery kept me guessing, and the sense of comeraderie and creativity was almost palpable in the radio drama scenes, which comprise a large part of the story. A character named Anne Riordan makes a cameo appearance, in a nod to Ray Chandler's Philip Marlowe books, which have clearly influenced Dunning. I'm not sure if 4 stars is too many, or two few. It is, when all is said and done, a very good book. I just hope Dunning can raise the bar a notch or two for his next effort, (hopefully a Cliff Janeway novel), as he's certainly shown he's capable of it.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: I picked up this novel with great anticipation, since it was by the author of the excellent mystery novel, the Bookman's Wake. It is difficult, however, to recognize the John Dunning of the Bookman's Wake in this flabby, overly long mystery interwoven with lengthy and irrelevant passages of melodrama from the early days of radio. Dunning is a keen fan of the early days of radio and the tragic waste of that medium, its utterly wasted promise, is a theme upon which he plays upon at too great length in this novel. Unfortunately, the novel's passages concerning a fictitious New Jersey radio station are a dramatic irrelevance to much of the plot of the mystery, and far worse, the scenes are largely unconvincing, littered with rather cardboardy characters and stilted dialogue. In fact, many of the radio station scenes read very much as though they came straight out of a Hollywood "B" movie of the '30's. Those movies are fun because they are campy, but it is hardly a joy to read a book which is so unintentionally campy. All of which is truly unfortunate, because buried away, very deeply indeed, in this very, very long novel, is a pretty good mystery. With good editing, relegating most of the radio days passages to the background would be an excellent start, the novel would be quite a good mystery. The length, by the way, is not the problem in itself. Many classic mysteries, such as Dorothy L. Sayers's the Nine Tailors, are quite long, but the length is integral to telling a story. Here, it is quite wasted.
Rating:
Summary: Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime
Review: I thought this a classic story. If I was an Eng. Lit. Prof (instead of a Biol. Prof), I would make this book required reading, and my students would delight as they moved through it. A wonderful story evoking the power of early radio, precisely two years before I was born. But I remember radio (in the UK) just before TV and then the DJ's took it over. This is a wonderful book. I hope John Dunning does another one. I can't believe I found it in paperback in a supermarket, and I bought it just because I had read everything else on the shelf (worth reading). That was two years ago and I have read it three times so far. I have no doubt I will chose to read it again in the future.
Rating:
Summary: A Great, Somewhat Over-Complex Mystery with an OTR Backdrop
Review: Mystery and Old-Time Radio fans will be nicely and gratifyingly hooked by this wartime tale from the l940s with excellent period atmosphere and a vibrant, real background in authentic old-time radio. Characters are complete and complex, the mystery well-done if a bit too involved in that it takes the reader away from the primary background into other locales that have little to do with the exciting, involving story of the adventurous radio station that wants to present controversial truth in their programming. I was personally a little irritated every time I left WHAR for other settings. But this is a terrific read and a hugely enjoyable one.
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