Rating: 
Summary: Another Great Story from John Dunning
Review: My apologies because I am no reviewer but I did want to say I bought Dunning's new book Tuesday and I just finished it ten minutes ago--read it in two days, could not put it down. It's one of the best things I've read in the last twelve months, and I've read a lot of books. It's intelligent and wise and a great great suspenser. Don't miss this one. Norman Corwin is mentioned early in the book. Mr. Corwin is still alive, he lives near me, and is a great and kind man. He's going to get my copy as a gift. Thanks, Mr. Dunning. Don't wait so long to write another one. It's been four long years since Bookman's Wake. Thanks again from Herb Slojewski
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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Summary: Triple Tiered Thriller
Review: Readers of this engrossing novel are in for a triple treat. First of all, it's a great, page turning thriller. Secondly, it recreates a forgotten era....the days of broadcast radio..giving an insight as to how those programs were created. Third, the summaries of the programs which the hero creates are mini-books in themselves. An outstanding achievement. Dare we hope for a TV mini-series (at least 10 hours long?)
Rating:
Summary: It brought back memories
Review: Set in 1942 on the Jersey shore,it's about spys and OTR and a very special romance. I probably liked this especially well because I could visulize the whole thing, having spent my youth right about where the story unfolds. I've worked in radio and John imbued the story with the "feeling" of a studio at the hight of the golden age. In fact I felt a lot of emotion while reading portions of it. Unlike another reviewer, I found the story had plenty of twists and turns and I enjoyed it to the end. Like Dunning, I was born in 1942, and that to lent a special quality to the book. He researched that era and nailed as far as I can tell.
Rating:
Summary: It brought back memories
Review: Set in 1942 on the Jersey shore,it's about spys and OTR and a very special romance. I probably liked this especially well because I could visulize the whole thing, having spent my youth right about where the story unfolds. I've worked in radio and John imbued the story with the "feeling" of a studio at the hight of the golden age. In fact I felt a lot of emotion while reading portions of it. Unlike another reviewer, I found the story had plenty of twists and turns and I enjoyed it to the end. Like Dunning, I was born in 1942, and that to lent a special quality to the book. He researched that era and nailed as far as I can tell.
Rating:
Summary: The message is delivered
Review: Set in the world of 1940's wartime radio, this is a worthwhile read. Though overlong, this spy-murder mystery alllows us a glimpse of a world just before our times. Most amazing is the speed at which a unique art industry grew, prospered and crashed. We are that much poorer and audio trash remains today.
Rating:
Summary: An Intimate Epic to Thrill and Treasure
Review: The book gets 5 stars only because 6 are unavailable. This magnicicent recreation of a time, a place, and an atmosphere that will seem as foreign to most younger readers as the sands of Mars is a marvelous achievement. Plot-wise, it is a credible mystery that grips the reader from page one. But it is so much more than that. The book's depiction of the early days of radio (which, alas, were also, unbeknownst to either the protagonists or the real world, the beginning of the last days of radio)are so detailed and involving that they may bring the art form back! The characters are real, complex, credible, and, rare for a thriller (or ANY book nowadays), people you get to know as well as your own, disfunctional, family. A few months ago there was a higly hyped tome called "The Advocate" which took place during WWII. It was awful. This book recreates that time, the people, the country, in such a way as to almost make one sad one wasn't part of it. And those radio stories! If my words don't move you to read this, as a thriller, as an historical piece, as a character study, well... buy the darn thing and make up your own words! If you do, you will!
Rating: 
Summary: False Advertising
Review: This is just not a thriller. Yeah, yeah, I know there's a mystery here, but it's not a good one. It fails on several levels: you don't care enough about the dead man to worry about how and why he was bumped off, and the ending is far too contrived to be credible. Finally, Dunning is far too fond of his other true loves (radio and horses) and tells us way more than we need to know about the mechanics of either to advance the plot.Having said all those good things, now let me proffer some deserved praise. As a purely historical novel about American life in the years before and into early WWII, the book works nicely. Dunning provides a vivid glimpse of a world now many years removed, when radio (not tv or the internet) was the mass medium, when American men in the millions took to the road because it was the only way they could support themselves, and when the fear of foreign invasion was all too real. It's not what it promises to be, but it was a pleasant minor historical read.
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Summary: Radio, Imagination and Mystery
Review: Through the evocative retelling of what "old time radio" was like, John Dunning reminds us of how stories create events in our imagination. He talked about this in a book signing I attended. He pointed out that the fact that radio did not have visual images left the listener free to picture in his or her own mind, the characters and places in a radio drama.
A novel does the same thing, and this novel calls to mind such things as: how deeply dark it must have been in blacked-out cities during WWII; and how the production of a radio broadcast was an immediate and chaotic happening that was, at its best, touching and profound.
My son does not want to see the movie "Harry Potter" because he thinks it will ruin all the pictures he has seen in his mind up to now. He seems to believe that he will lose something precious by seeing the movie. Similarly, Dunning reminds us in this novel that the powerful visual images of TV and movies greatly truncate the use of our own imaginations. Radio- and novels, enhance imagination, and thus, Dunning seems to be saying, they enhance our experience of ourselves.
He does this with a story that grabs and holds you and a mystery that keeps you guessing.
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Summary: DUNNING + GAINES = SUPERB LISTENING
Review: Tony-Award winner Boyd Gaines delivers an impressive reading of John Dunning's much anticipated thriller, "Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime." Those who have seen Gaines either on Broadway, in films, or on television (Frasier, L.A. Law) know he's a multi talented actor. He brings all of these abilities to bear in his topnotch rendering of a suspense laden tale set in the radio days of 1942. Fans of Dunning's "Booked To Die" and "The Bookman's Wake" will relish this trip to New Jersey based radio station WHAR. Once again, Dunning creates believable, affecting characters in singer Holly Carnahan and script writer Jack Dulaney. Holly's father has vanished, and his disappearance may be linked to an actor who worked at the station some years ago. As the plot unravels, we're reminded again of just why Dunning so richly deserved his Nero Wolfe Award. Dunning + Gaines = superb listening.
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