THE LAST GOOD DAY

It was early on one of those powder-blue late-September mornings when middle-aged commuters stand on platforms, watching airplanes pass before the sun and hoping the apex of some great arc in their lives hasn't already been reached.


On the far side of the Hudson from the train station, the Rockland County palisades glinted as if they'd been freshly chopped by God's own cleaver. From the rustling trees along the shoreline came the same sound of money in the wind that the old Dutch trades must have heard when they first rounded this little bend in the river.


The water was brownish and turbulent, as if a low flame were on underneath it. Out by the narrowing of the channel, a forty-five-foot cabin cruiser skimmed across the surface, leaving a broad foamy cape. The ripples spread, pushing the cattails and the submerged bluish-gray mass closer to the crooked-in elbow of land beside Riverside Station.


"Hey, what is that thing?" said Barry Shulman, standing at the platform railing.
The Last Good Day
Peter Blauner

I ran onto Peter Blauner as one of the writers in Nelson DeMille's Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and the Dead. I made a list of most of the authors and this one by Peter Blauner is the first I've read from that list.

Excellent book. I was captivate from the first. More suspense than mystery, but that's only good. I'll read more from Blauner's backlist.