Death for the Phantom Receiver

Rating:
Summary: Stylish mystery thriller
Review: Thomas F. Sheehan is praised for beautiful poetry and stunning prose, but many of his fans don't know he writes gritty mysteries. I doubt if Spillane at his best could equal this one. Tough talking cops and private eyes, lush leggy blondes and redheads, and shadowy villains bring excitement to Death for the Phantom Receiver The cast of characters and noir style make this book a standout among mysteries.

Paul Lanyard, owner of the New England Phantoms football team, is a self made man. He knows how to make money and where to invest it. What Lanyard doesn't know is how to cure the feeling, the knowing in his gut that someone is murdering his players. One player has been shot, one killed by a hit and run vehicle, and another poisoned. Verifying that gut feeling will take a special kind of team, a team he's hired before on other projects, private investigators Kell Thorn and Harry Krisman.
Kell and Harry bring their individual strengths to any investigation. But this time around, the Massachusetts based partners seem to be tracking smoke and shadows.

Harry Krisman is a slightly gimped up ex-cop who doesn't let a partial leg prosthesis slow him down. Harry is a one woman man, enamored of Prof. Maxine Humdroph. Her intelligence and charm often sets his mind wandering at inopportune times, but few crooks stand a chance once Harry zeroes in on them.

Kell Thorn is a defrocked judge with fashion sense and an eye for the ladies. Cops and judges along the eastern seaboard owe him favors and he's not above calling on them in a pinch. From first meeting, Savannah born and bred Magnolia Comfort has Kell by the short hairs, both literally and figuratively.

Phantoms draft pick, Kelvar Hobbins, is young, black and beautiful, with the power of ancient Africa firing bones and sinews. He fears ending up dead like several of his Phantoms teammates. Kelvar's grandmother, Sadie Janelle Hobbins, is still young and vital, a sexual dynamo. Her stable of boyfriends stand at the ready to do anything she asks of them.

When Harry disappears without a trace, Maxine and Magnolia head south to Florida, determined to help Kell find him. Whatever female strategy it takes, Max and Maggie are determined to bring Harry home alive. All three find themselves drawn into Tampa's dark underbelly, pursuing an odd assortment of slim leads and shady suspects.

Death for the Phantom Receiver is a modern stylish thriller, sparked with subtle hints of noir glamor and intrigue. Think savvy heroes like Bogart or Gable. Think feisty dames like Lombard or Bacall. Then mix them all together in a twenty first century Tarantino film and you'll have a hint of how Sheehan builds a mystery genre thriller. You don't have to be a football fan to appreciate this one.


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Rating:
Summary: Tough women and tough men in a tough game
Review: Thomas F. Sheehan's new Krisman novel is a must-read even for those with minimal interest in football or professional sports in general. Here footballers, perhaps our modern-days gladiators, symbols for many of strength and manlihood, find themselves helpless preys to a killer with a woman's voice, and who strikes at night, taking remorseless advantage of men's immemorial weaknesses, in a variety of manners. Roles are reversed in more than one way too, as Krisman and his associate, ex-judge Kell Thorn, realize there is no leaving their girls behind even for a few days' "business" travel in Florida. Sheehan has his very own idea of what makes a woman great. He solves brilliantly the age-old dilemma which opposes mind and body: by investing both with personality within his female characters, he makes them all the more real and many-dimensioned. Arguably, women are the true heroes of the story, from a loving and devoted grandmother to the shrewd, word-thrifty neighbour of a runaway suspect, from Max, Harry Krisman's muse of life, to the mysterious assassin who also happens, it seems, to be a bombshell, and who kickstarts the novel with a very short love scene. Everywhere women are the bonds, the pillars, and the engines of life, for better or worse, so much so that the heroes, Krisman and Kell, both hired by the owner of a pro football team to investigate into the murder of several of his players, seem almost overwhelmed by their energy, especially that of Magnolia Comfort, fiery in appearance and character, and whose origin is a short but splendid story within the story. Dialogues suffused with Tom Sheehan's poetic language, along with the ever-present them of love, artfully combined with what it takes to satisfy a reader of crime fiction, help make "Death for the Phantom Receiver" much more than just a p.i. novel, and caters both for your thirst of well-spun tales and your taste for the delicate choreography of words.

Guillaume Destot
former editor of 3 AM Magazine