Losing Lenore
A Tommy Cuda Mystery
About power, betrayal, and collusion to make amends, Losing Lenore is an exciting thriller.
A date-rape survivor clues a returning sleuth into an elaborate drug-dealing operation in Joe Klingler’s gritty mystery novel Losing Lenore.
Tommy, an unlicensed, aspiring private eye in Chicago, hopes to drive across Route 66 in his grandfather’s Plymouth Barracuda. At a rest stop, he meets Leni, a college student who fled from her assailant. At first unaware of her circumstances, Tommy offers her a ride. As Leni divulges her relationship with the man, who tails them in a blue Cadillac, Tommy accepts Leni as a client despite her caginess about what she hopes to achieve. Along the way, Tommy meets Leni’s computer-savvy friend, Prof.
Leni is characterized in terms of her contradictory desires: She’s estranged from her family and reluctant to return to her studies, even though she wants to become a psychiatrist. She’s also torn between feelings of revenge and love. She’s enigmatic, withholding details and giving cryptic hints about herself. At her opposite, Tommy is fleshed out in terms of his vintage-inspired interests: He listens to vinyl records, plays guitar, and rattles off the details about his pony car with ease. His knack for connecting with people through music and cars helps him in his investigation, as both interests lend him cachet inside of clubs and other key locales. Midcentury popular culture references also fit in well with Tommy’s road-trip dreams—a source of levity in a story focused on dark crimes.
Tommy’s male-gazing views are jarring, though: He muses on Leni’s attractiveness, which is off-putting in light of her vulnerable position. An ingenue waitress is also typecast as a seductress. The women characters are best drawn when they reveal themselves on their own terms, through smart bits of conversation and keen deductions.
The mystery progresses at a steady pace thanks to the methodical revelation of clues and Prof and Tommy’s mixture of technological knowledge with old-fashioned surveillance techniques. Indeed, Prof’s rapport with Tommy is vivifying: They formulate clever plans to get Leni back after she disappears, resulting in a multicity search through “rattle-can graffiti” streets and a wilderness retreat. They also receive outside help from varied sources, including a detective.
Thrilling plot twists unmask the complex people in Leni’s orbit. At times, though, her personal problems are overshadowed by the details of an organized-crime drug scheme in the background. And when a key character’s secrets from the past are revealed, the fallout is resolved in haste.
Featuring an unpredictable cloak-and-dagger finale, the serpentine mystery novel Losing Lenore follows a capable man as he becomes invested in a young woman’s rescue.
Reviewed by
Karen Rigby
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
