The Man Who Never Returned

"A dazzling story by a fine writer. Fintan Dunne is a memorable hero who you want to meet again and again" (James Patterson).

Judge Joe Crater's disappearance in 1930 spawned countless conspiracy theories and captured the imagination of a nation caught in the grip of The Depression.

Twenty-five years later, Fintan Dunne, the detective encountered in Quinn's novel Hour of the Cat, recently retired and bored, answers a summons to New York where he is asked to solve the old case for a newspaper magnate only interested in making a profit from the story. Peter Quinn once again has written a compelling blend of history and fiction that is simply unputdownable.

"In The Man Who Never Returned, Peter Quinn shapes a tantalizing tale around the enduring mystery of Judge Joseph Force Crater, whose disappearance remains a major mystery . . . This is noir fiction at its finest." —William Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ironweed

"A masterful and evocative tale, set in a beautifully rendered 1950s New York, it combines true crime with vivid imagining. This is that rare book: A first-rate thriller that seamlessly weaves together page-turning narrative with richly detailed characters whose motivations—complex, suspect, hidden—always ring true." —Thomas Kelly, author of A Testament of Devotion

"Peter Quinn brings wit, panache and a deep knowledge of the Big Apple to his latest Fintan Dunne novel . . . A taut thriller." —T. J. English, New York Times–bestselling author of Whitey's Payback

"An utterly compelling story . . . Gripping from the first page to the last, Peter Quinn creates a unique and utterly believable world, part history, part fiction." —Gabriel Byrne, Golden Globe Award–winning actor