Healy's Later Cuddy Novels example essay topic

Jeremiah Healy is the award-winning author of the John Francis Cuddy private-investigator series and the Mairead O'Clare legal-thriller series, both set primarily in Boston. Born in Teaneck, New Jersey on May 15, 1948, he graduated from Rutgers University in l 970, got his JD at Harvard Law School in l 973, and passed the Massachusetts Bar in 1974. He was an associate with a Boston law firm, from l 974 to 1978, gaining a lot of courtroom experience. (Michaels, 2003) The Army ROTC helped pay for his education, and Healy served as a military police officer, leaving the Army in 1976 as a captain.

He married Bonnie M. Tiller on Feb. 4, l 978, the same year he began teaching at the New England School of Law in Boston. His first novel, Blunt Darts written during the summer of 1981, was rejected 28 times before it was published in 1984. The book is dedicated "To Bonnie, who is Beth". Healy has served as President of the Private Eyes Writers of America for two years, and is a past Awards Chair for the Shamus. In October 2000, he was elected President of the International Association of Crime Writers (I ACW).

Books of his have been translated into French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and German. He was toastmaster at the 1996 World Mystery Convention (Bouchercon) and will be International Guest of Honor at Bouchercon 2004 in Toronto. (Michaels, 2003) Healy has written seventeen novels and over sixty short stories. Fifteen of these works have won or been nominated for the Shamus Award.

The Mairead O'Clare legal thrillers are UNCOMMON JUSTICE, JUROR NUMBER ELEVEN, and A STAIN UPON THE ROBE, which has been optioned for Hollywood by Flatiron Films (producer of PAY IT FORWARD, starring Helen Hunt and Kevin Spacey). Healy's later Cuddy novels include RESCUE, INVASION OF PRIVACY, THE ONLY GOOD LAWYER, and SPIRAL. A stand-alone private-eye thriller, TURNABOUT, appeared in December, 2001, and the second collection of his Cuddy short stories, CUDDY PLUS ONE, was published in the summer of 2003. The first collection of Healy's non-Cuddy stories, OFF-SEASON AND OTHER STORIES, appeared from Five Star in June, 2003. (Cincinnati Media, 2005) Healy's most recognized character, private investigator John Francis Cuddy, is more moral than religious, a man who believes strongly in representing his clients, keeping his promises, and ferreting out the truth.

He stays sexually faithful to the memory of his dead wife; waiting until he finds someone he thinks can replace Beth in his life. He even goes to the cemetery where she's buried and has graveside "conversations" with her as a way of dealing with his loss. (Cincinnati Media, 2005) The idea for the continuing dialog between Cuddy and his dead wife came to him while attending a funeral: "At the funeral, I noticed an old man holding a hat and rotating it by the brim, rocking back and forth, clearly talking to a headstone... In a sense it was odd, but in a way it wasn't. If you " re used to talking to someone every day then wouldn't you continue even after they had died?" (Healy, 1977) Cuddy has a wise-cracking sense of humor, but he can also be credibly violent, having learned in the Army the martial art of Jukado as well as how to handle many firearms. To stay in shape, Cuddy jogs along the Charles River (where he trained for the Boston Marathon) and works out at a Nautilus club in the "yuppie" Victorian neighborhood of Back Bay, where he now rents a condo from a doctor doing a residency in Chicago.

The series has a fairly small, rotating cast of supporting characters. Nancy Meagher is an assistant district attorney and Cuddy's potential love interest. Robert Murphy serves as the only African-American lieutenant in the Boston Police Homicide Unit, Sergeant Detective [Boston's ranking system] Bonnie Cross serves as the only female in that unit. Primo Zuppone is a mob enforcer and reluctant friend who loves New Age piano music, and Mo Katz en works as a newspaper reporter. (Cincinnati media, 2005) As an investigator, Cuddy, works to bring justice to a law-bound society, focusing on the kinds of cases the "system" just doesn't handle very well. Many of the books in the series focus on "fall between the cracks" situations (the search for the missing son of a Mayflower-family judge in BLUNT DARTS when the jurist doesn't seem to want his son found, the investigation into the death of the fashion-model-daughter of a Mafia chieftain in SHALLOW GRAVES, the murder of a Holocaust survivor / store owner in ACT OF GOD).

Other novels raise controversial legal issues (the Nicole-Brown-Simpson-like tragedy of a battered wife in SWAN DIVE, the right to keep a reporter's sources confidential in YESTERDAY'S NEWS, the Dr. Kevorkian question of assisted suicide in RIGHT TO DIE). The more recent novels have dealt with cases pulled from the headlines (the extent to which people should be investigated in INVASION OF PRIVACY, the killings of male divorce attorneys by irate, opponent / client husbands in THE ONLY GOOD LAWYER, and the investigation of a Jon Benet Ramsey-like murder in South Florida in SPIRAL). (Cincinnati Media, 2005) Jeremiah Healy writes using a method of "back stepping". Starting from a known destination, the thrilling conclusion of the work, he strings the plot together backwards so that the events in the beginning of the story are vital to understanding the conclusion.

To insure that the facts flow coherently through the work, Healy supplements his own varied experience with actual visitations and interviews of the places and events featured in his works. This approach yields a suspenseful read which is as entertaining as it is believable. (Healy, 1977)