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by: Donald Pfarrer
List Price: $26.00Amazon.com's Price: $15.60 You Save: $10.40 (40%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781400066902
ISBN: 1400066905
Label: Random House
Manufacturer: Random House
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: August 05, 2008
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: August 05, 2008
Sales Rank: 89218
Studio: Random House
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In the Chicago Tribune, Alan Cheuse described Donald Pfarrer’s novel The Fearless Man as “the gold standard for any other fiction to come out about the [Vietnam] war.” Now, in this new novel, Pfarrer presents another kind of war, the one in America’s streets, with the same kind of excitement, style, and power.
Steven McCord, a lieutenant of police in a fairly large midwestern city, has been coarsened by twenty years’ exposure to violence and cruelty. At forty-two, he has reached a crossroads in his career and in his life. He’s been entrusted with command of one of his city’s toughest districts, and as a senior lieutenant, he is poised for promotion to captain. But instead he’s studying law–because he wants out. His old mentor, Sergeant Hughes, fears that McCord will soon enter into that most contemptible of all legal specialties, criminal defense. McCord denies it, but in truth he doesn’t know exactly where he’s going to end up.
Then comes the “common ordinary murder” of an old eccentric–a resident of McCord’s district–and with it a personal crisis for McCord. Having given up on God long ago, he now seems to be losing faith in humanity as well. But something about the case draws him, against his will, deeper into the lives of the victim and his family, pulling McCord back to a place where he will know again the passion and pain of being alive.
Written in the intense, clear-cut style that is Donald Pfarrer’s trademark, A Common Ordinary Murder is a gripping story of crime and punishment; it is also the drama of one man’s test of love and strength.
Advance praise for A Common Ordinary Murder:
“A number of intriguing, complicated characters; a particularly heinous crime; solid police work; and a poignant sketch of a city in decline are good reasons to read this one . . . really an examination of faith, its loss, marriage, and love.”
–Booklist
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A Common Ordinary Murder is a complex, exceptional story
Donald Pfarrer may not be well known yet. But if he continues to write more books like his acclaimed THE FEARLESS MAN and his current A COMMON ORDINARY MURDER, then fame and fortune are inevitable. His themes are complex, and his writing style accommodates the depths that he explores. Fairness, justice, love, responsibility, devotion and self-awareness are neatly woven into this exceptional story.
The novel opens with the thoughts and actions of an old man who has begun to lose touch ... Read More
Rating: - Mesmerizing
This is a novel of extraordinary power, that seizes the reader from the first page and compells us to care about its central protagonist, a police officer struggling with a mid-life crisis as he investigates a terrible crime. Donald Pfarrer's characters -- Police Lt. Steven McCord, who moonlights as a law student and falls hard for a nurse he barely knows; his wife, Nora, who has risen at city hall without losing her intense Catholic faith; Charles Carden, an elderly lawyer haunted by his experience ... Read More
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