The Big Goodbye

Written by Michael Lister

Narrated by Allen Walker

A vulnerable woman being followed. A PI determined to protect her. Former lovers embroiled in an intense mystery thriller fraught with intrigue and danger. A sexy, romantic, suspenseful ride through the atmospheric 1940s.

“Lister’s hard-edged prose ranks with the best of contemporary noir fiction.” Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review of The Big Goodbye.

Walk the mean streets of wartime Panama City with Jimmy “Soldier” Riley, a wounded, woman-haunted knight errant in Michael Lister’s resonant new noir series Publisher’s Weekly calls “a promising private detective series set in 1940s Florida,” and Library Journal says “peppered with snappy dialog, this hard-boiled mystery by award winner Lister is a swell read.”

Someone is following Lauren Lewis.

She ducks into the office of PI, Jimmy “Soldier” Riley, not to hire him, but to find out if he’s the one following her. Back when they were lovers he told her if he ever decided to, she’d never know he was there.

It’s1940’s Panama City, Florida. The world is at war, and the growing panhandle paradise is doing its part. Tyndall Field is training pilots. Wainwright Shipyard is building battleships. The Naval Section Base is protecting vessels in the Gulf. The Dixie Sherman Hotel is hosting celebrities such as Clark Gable. Harry Lewis, a wealthy banker, is running for mayor, unaware his wife is running for her life.

With a secret to hide and a husband running for mayor in a city exploding and expanding like no other time in history, Lauren doesn’t want trouble, but she’s about to get a double-barrel full of it. Only one man can help her, and though it might destroy him, he doesn’t mind. Better to die than be the walking wounded.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pulpwood Press
• Release date: Jul 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781947606715

Michael Lister

Michael Lister is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the John Jordan mystery thriller series.

Reviews for The Big Goodbye

[datrappert · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This noir hardboiled mystery, set in wartime Panama City, Florida starts off okay, but ends up sinking due to a convoluted plot with an epiphany so stupid you may be tempted to put down the book 3/4 of the way through. Nor is there any really memorable dialogue a la Raymond Chandler or John D. MacDonald to pick things up. Lister's prose is serviceable at best, and the heart pangs his hero, Jimmy Riley, is constantly having for his lost love Lauren are just about too much for a reader to bear. After a while, you just want the whole thing to be over so you can find out who did it and why. And even when you do, you may not care. This is a series I'm crossing off my list.

[edgoldberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I started out liking The Big Goodbye because it has that 1940s noir-ish feeling to it. However, I got bored about half way through.It takes place in 1943 and Jimmy Riley has lost his right arm in some freak way....untold in the story. He's obsessed with his ex-girlfriend, Lauren, who's married to Harry Lewis, who is running for mayor of Panama City, FL. Jimmy is a partner in a private detective agency, with Ray, a former Pinkerton. Lauren comes to Jimmy, ostensibly for help but then withdraws the request. Jimmy, of course, can't abide by that and starts shadowing Lauren to find out what's going on. Ray gets involved as do several other characters (their secretary, July and a friend, Clip). There are dead bodies cropping up but the main thrust is Jimmy's obsession with Lauren.I'm in the midst of reading mystery stories actually written in the 1920s through 1940s and if you're looking for noir mysteries, I'd go that route.