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Article: NEW IN PAPERBACK
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- April 16, 1989
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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MYSTERIES
Joey's Case
, by K.C. Constantine (Mysterious Press, $4.50). Resolutely
peudonymous, K.C. Constantine has written eight of the very best
American crime novels ever. All are set in the decaying western
Pennsylvania steel town of Rocksburg, its population a cross-section
of ethnic rust-belt America. Mario Balzic is the aging police chief
in the series, who generally finds himself beset with family
problems, Tammany Hall-style political pressure, and a tricky murder
or two. What makes this series so fine, though, is less the
crime-solving than the portrait of a vanishing world, a world of
piroghie, stuffed cabbage, and church festivals, of old Italian men
in shirt-sleeves sipping ...