Dead as a Doornail: A Stan Kraychik Mystery - Softcover

Michaels, Grant

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312206445 ISBN 13: 9780312206444

Publisher: Stonewall Inn Mysteries, 1999

Synopsis

Newly wealthy ex-hairdresser Stan Kraychik buys the last unrenovated brownstone in Boston's fabulously chic South End only to have the renovations held up by a freak April snowstorm-and the murder of the young, attractive contractor. Because the victim bears some resemblance to Stan himself, the police think he might have been the intended target and want to leave town while they look for the killer. Instead Stan begins to snoop around on his own, discovering a web of secrets and jealousies that someone has killed to protect-and the contractor's murder is only the beginning.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Critical Praise for Grant Michaels' Stan Kraychik series:

"Another entertaining haywire adventure for the sleuthing Boston hairdresser." --Library Journal on Time to Check Out

"This is a first-rate mystery with an Agatha Christie lineup of very possible suspects and Stan Kraychik playing a terrific Poirot." --San Francisco Chronicle on Dead on Your Feet

"The opera setting is as ripe for Michaels as it was for the Marx Brothers - and the finale even squeezes in a little of them too." --Kirkus Reviews on Mask for a Diva

"An engaging mystery that epitomizes the best in the genre. The one-liners fly as fast as bullets and there is a surprise in nearly every chapter...." --The Advocate on Love You To Death

"Michaels hands another case to out-of-the-closet, loud-and-proud Boston hairdresser Stan Kraychik in this witty fast-moving romp." --Publisher's Weekly on Dead on Your Feet

From Kirkus Reviews:

Moneyed ex-hairdresser Stan Kraychik, who's now added ex-cop-in-training to his rsum (despite his sharpshooting prowess, he's officially on a leave of absence from the Boston police academy and knows that the homophobia he's seen on the force will keep him from returning), has started rehabbing a South End brownstone. With the help of his dishy rookie contractor, Tim Shaughnessy, Stan dreams of opening a guesthouse that'll revitalize the neighborhood. But the project is brought to a halt as abruptly as is Tim, whom Stan finds lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Accident, says Lt. Vito Branco. Murder, retorts Stan, whose next brain wave is that the killer must be one of his neighbors on Tremont Street. Sure enough, Tim's girlfriend Angie; his landlady, buff realtor Salena Hightower; Salena's husband, kitchen-techseller Thorin Hightower; Waspish retro tableware maven Myron Kratz; and Chip Holton, the Adonis of the South End Kinesiological Society (SEKS), are all connected to Tim--the last three as closely as biology and commerce can bring them--though it takes endless rounds of Tremont Street, and a spot of illegal eavesdropping on Branco's interrogation tapes, to put Stan on the track of a well-nigh invisible clue. Jokey, flighty, featherweight, and a notch below Time to Check Out (1996): not for any except devotees of malicious pansexual gossip. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stonewall Inn Mysteries
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0312206445
• ISBN 13: 9780312206444
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256