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Rick Boyer
THE PENNY FERRY (Doc Adams Mysteries) 1984, 1990 Mass Market Paperback Publisher: Fawcett; First Thus edition (January 29, 1990) Language: English ISBN-10: 0804105502 ISBN-13: 978-0804105507 (1) biblio.com 6/30/10 review title: DOC ADAMS AND THE GUILT OR INNOCENCE OF SACCO AND VANZETTI recommend to others? YES Perhaps 90 % of everything I know about the Sacco-Vanzetti murder trials that lasted from 1920 until 1927 I learned from Rick Boyer's 1984, reissued 1990 detective thriller THE PENNY FERRY. Dental surgeon Doctor Charles Adams ("Doc") makes his second of nine appearances as an easily bored man. crimes and mysteries are a sure fire way to waken him from his daily slumber. And in THE PENNY FERRY Doc, wife Mary and her brother, Lieutenant of Police Joseph Brinelli get swept up in a scheme involving Sacco and Vanzetti and evidence that will either clear them or prove them murderers. Is it the Mafia on the trail of a mysterious photograph that will give Sacco his alibi? Or is it a 92 year old WASP who masterminded the anarchists' guilty verdict and execution? The hints and clues are fairly presented. The red herrings are indeed deceptive, but with care you can tell them from the real thing. Doc Adams would not be Doc if he didn't find himself on the receiving end of kicks, blows, frights and general mayhem. Half thriller, half puzzle to be unraveled, THE PENNY FERRY is a memorable yarn for a rainy day. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/first-edition/the-penny-ferry-boyer-rick- %5Bdust-wrapper-art-by~7c~253937 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com review's title: "Life's biggest problem is that it's boring. At least it's boring most of the time." THE PENNY FERRY, Rick Boyer's novel of 1984, reissued 1990, is a very good read. From it I also learned 99% of what I know about the 1920 arrest in Brockton, Massachusetts on murder charges and 1927 execution of immigrant Italian anarchists Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Ferdinando Nicola Sacco. As described by Boyer: Sacco was "a shoe trimmer, who lived in Stoughton" and Vanzetti "a fish peddler from Plymouth." Bot "got an especially raw deal" (The Hot Item: introduction to the novel). Curiously, the novel's title, THE PENNY FERRY" is neither explained, nor becomes a clue before Chapter 22 (of 25 chapters). One ferry appears in a photo allegedly taken on the afternoon of April 15, 1920. It is of a collision between a penny ferry boat and a cargo launch. A group of three clearly identifiable men in the foreground was accidentally included by the photographer. This photograph leads Doctor Charles Adams, dental surgeon of Concord, Massachusetts, into his final confrontation with the man behind the two murders that launch this second in the series of nine DOC ADAMS mystery thrillers, all set in and around Greater Boston. In the very first chapter of THE PENNY FERRY, Doc Adams and his wife Mary, attend a fund raising reception for Republican candidate for Governor Joseph Carlton Critchfeld III. An off-the-cuff remark by the candidatein reply to a question draws a sharp rebuke from Mary. Critchfeld had implied that unprejudiced 1980s Boston Italian-Americans would have found Sacco and Vanzetti guilty. Historically, most Italians still felt that Massachusetts WASPS had railroaded the two Italians over six decades earlier. The duo went to their deaths despite protests from all over the United States and mass rallies in London, Paris, Rome and elsewhere. In Chapter Two, author Boyer's narrator, Doc Adams, and his police lieutenant brother in law Joe Brindelli go looking for a special messenger who had failed to deliver to Doc dental fixtures he was scheduled to install in a patient. They find the armed messenger dead, murdered by poison gas, in his home in Lowell. And the novel is well and fully launched. All the elements that move THE PENNY FERRY are in place and key clues are laid out or alluded to between the novel's title and the end of Chapter Two. Doc Adams' work extracting impacted wisdom teeth and doing corrective surgery is occasionally fulfilling, but more often then not boring. And Doc opines: "Life's biggest problem is that it's
boring. At least it's boring most of the time" (Ch. 11).
But it always happens: Doc is never bored for long. Things drag him into murders, mayhem, breaking and entering and the passions still felt by Italian Americans against the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Doc Adams bores easily, but never for long. I think that both Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper ("the American Scott") would read THE PENNY FERRY with pleasure. They would welcome to their company Rick Boyer as one who knows how to bring history to life in fiction. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/cafelibri/reviews/UserReview-rick_boyer_the_penny_ferry -74-1489248-24565-_Life_s_biggest_problem_is_that_it_s_boring_At.html? gat=review =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com title of review: "I remember the penny ferries ... They were for the working people ... it was the only way they could get to their jobs, so they kept the fare low" rating of THE PENNY FERRY: * * * * Posted 6/30/2010: As in James Fenimore Cooper's great murder novel of 1833, THE HEADSMAN, vital evidence is hidden on a dog in Rick Boyer's 1984, 1990 THE PENNY FERRY. Boyer's novel is the second in the series of nine DOC ADAMS mysteries set in and around Boston, Massachusetts. The title refers to the collision on the afternoon of April 15, 1920 of the ferry boat Ashburnam and the much smaller cargo launch Grenadier. That collision (probably fictional) was allegedly photographed for its own sake. But around 1980 a researcher discovered three figures on shore in the foreground. As proof of his presence 12 miles from the scene of a murder for which he was executed in 1927, that photograph would have been an irrefutable alibi for Italian immigrant anarchist Ferdinando Nicola Sacco. And the photo would have also been part of a chain of evidence pointing to fictional nonagenerian Massachusetts patrician Old Joe Critchfield and his successful efforts to railroad Sacco and Vanzetti to their judicial murders. Old Joe could not permit this evidence to become known. For his grandson Joseph Carlton Critchfeld III was now running what looked like a successful campaign to become the Bay State's Republican Governor. With masterly plot construction, author Rick Boyer early on links his hero, Dr ("Doc") Charles Adams, dental surgeon of Concord, to the Critchfields, to his Italian American wife Mary's inherited belief in the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, to Doc's daily grind of extracting wisdom teeth and doing reconstructive jaw surgery, to stockbroker patient Tom Costello's need for an intricate, expensive "anterior fixed bridge" created by Doc, to its non-delivery by normally ultra-reliable Johnny Robinson of Dependable Messenger Service of Cambridge, and then to the discovery in Lowell by Doc and brother in law police Lieutenant Joe Brindelli of the corpse of Robinson lying in his home. With Robinson lay his two German shepherd dogs, equally dead -- from poison gas as it turned out! Looks like a mafia hit. But why? Another clue: two bitten off human fingers in the mouth of one of the dogs. And THE PENNY FERRY goes galloping along. And like it or not, Doc Adams and wife Mary are running with the pack. We learn that Johnny Robinson was delivering a document about Sacco and Vanzetti when he was killed. He was killed by professional hit men searching for the document. The heir of the man who donated the document is also soon found killed. Doc's house is ransacked, as is the office of Dependable Messenger Service. What is that document? Where is it hidden? Does it exonerate Sacco and Vanzetti, thereby indicting the WASP power structure of 1920s Massachusetts? Or, as seems more likely, does the document prove the two anarchists guilty? This would massively demoralize Boston's Italian American community including Mary Adams and her brother Lieutenant Joseph Brindelli. It is long before we are told of the salience of Boston's long gone penny passenger ferries. But finally we learn: "I
remember the penny ferries ... They were for the working people ... it
was the only way they could get to their jobs, so they kept the fare
low" (Ch. 22).
Bottom line: this is a tightly constructed detective thriller. Its clues are fairly presented. Avoid the red herrings and enjoy unraveling both whodunnit and why they dunnit. -OOO- Other books recommended: -- James Fenimore Cooper - THE HEADSMAN; -- Rick Boyer - A SHERLOCKIAN QUARTET, BILLINGSGATE SHOAL http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Penny-Ferry/Rick-Boyer/ e/9780804105507/?itm=3&USRI=rick+boyer+-+the+penny+ferry =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com review title: "None of my enemies will be mourned as I am." -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1927. rating of THE PENNY FERRY * * * * I can think of three famous reviewers who would heap praise on THE PENNY FERRY, Rick Boyer's detective novel of 1984, 1990) -- because Boyer would remind them of themselves: -- Sir Walter Scott, a great lover of
dogs. So is Doctor ("Doc") Charles Adams, hero of the nine DOC ADAMS
mystery novels;
-- James Fenimore Cooper, whose 1833 novel of the Alps, THE HEADSMAN, hid important evidence on a giant Newfoundland; Boyer's THE PENNY FERRY did the same on the dead by poisoning body of a German shepherd; and -- G. K. Chesteron, whose immortal FATHER BROWN solved crimes through intimate knowledge of what motivates sinners as revealed in Roman Catholic confessionals. Doc Adams's wife's younger brother Joseph Brindelli is a rising star in Massachusetts State Police and had been a Roman Catholic priest. All four authors show considerable interest in Roman Catholicism. In THE PENNY FERRY, Lieutenant Brindelli says: "Like
all good Italian boys I was taught the basics, you know: don't eat meat
on Friday, go to confession, FDR is the greatest President who ever
lived, Joe DiMaggio is the world's greatest ballplayer ... and Sacco
and Vanzetti were innocent" (Ch. 14).
Joe Brindelli had explained earlier how his father had found a good partner decades ago for their future construction business: "Ray
wasn't Italian, but he was Catholic, which was almost as good. They
were in the same parish. So they went in as partners" (Ch. 10).
On the other hand, the combined families Adams and Brindelli are no more religious than they need to be. Sunday morning Mary asks if they are going to church. No says brother Joe. He and Doc have to go to Cambridge to look for a murdered delivery man's missing . pouch. Fine with Mary. She "retired to her workshop" to work on ceramics (Ch. 5). What was missing was a hush hush document that would either prove anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti guilty or innocent of the 1920 murder for which they were convicted and executed. The Italians of Boston fear that the Sons of Italy have committed two murders in search of the mystery document, because they feared it would implicate the heroic Sacco and Vanzetti. On the other hand there may be WASPS at work to prove they were right 60 years earlier to railroad two innocent men to their untimely but politically correct deaths. His accusers and the judge who unfairly presided at their trial are no longer admired or even remembered. But the last words of one of them are indeed remembered: "None
of my enemies will be mourned as I am." -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
1927 (Ch. 7).
THE PENNY FERRY is a gripping whodunnit, full of old but still smoldering ethnic tensions. There is a very plausible tie-in between Doc Adams's daily work in Concord as a dental surgeon and the search by very evil men for the missing evidence from the delivery man's pouch. This is a fairly presented puzzle. Grasp the clues and you will solve the mystery. But be careful of red herrings! -OOO- TAGS: rick boyer, doc adams detective novels, sacco and vanzetti, boston's penny ferries http://www.amazon.com/Penny-Ferry-Doc-Adams-Mysteries/ dp/0804105502/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277902581&sr=1-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com no matches 6/30/10. Draft sent up 7/1/10 still waiting for epinions.com to make THE PENNY FERRY reviewable. TPK Title of this review: Were Sacco and Vanzetti guilty or innocent? Reviewer's rating of THE PENNY FERRY: * * * * PROS: Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. 60 years later Doc Adams finds the man who railroaded them. CONS: Very didactic. Clues perhaps too obvious. A mystery too easily solved. Ethnic stereotypes. BOTTOM LINE: Justice abused 1920 - 1927 leading to execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Boston's Italian Americans enraged after 60 years. An evil WASP still proud of killing Italian "effluvia" -- guilty or not. RECOMMENDED TO OTHER READERS: Yes! Review by aohcapablanca: July 1, 2010 Do you have at least a vague notion of who were immigrant Italian anarchists Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Ferdinando Nicola Sacco? By the time you have read four of the 25 chapters of Rick Boyer's thriller THE PENNY FERRY, you will probably know twenty times more about them than you did before you cracked its pages. Both men had gone to Mexico to avoid being drafted during World War I. They were anarchists, but not apparently given to violence. On being arrested in 1920 on murder charges, they told lies. Seven years later, despite massive protests in the USA, England, France, Italy, etc., the two were executed. THE PENNY FERRY is set in and around Boston in the early 1980s. A researcher has uncovered evidence from 1920 -- a photograph, it turns out, of a collision of a penny ferry boat with a smaller harbor cargo vessel -- that could prove decisively that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent. Or guilty. Not clear which. But ,in what looks like mob action, two persons thought to know where that photo is are murdered. Doc Charles Adams, Concord dental surgeon, is drawn in because the first man murdered failed to deliver from a laboratory dental plates that Doc needed to implant in a patient. Doc's wife Mary's brother, Detective Lieutenant Joseph Brindelli, becomes involved because he knows the 55 year old black man who was to deliver what Doc needed. While up in Lowell, the two then discovered body number one, the messenger. Fairly early on an alert reader will begin to wonder if a 92 year old WASP patrician is in some way involved. "Old Joe" Critchfield is fabulously wealthy, was active in "railroading" Sacco and Vanzetti in the 1920s. Now his grandson, Joseph Carlton Critchfeld III, looks like becoming the next Republican Party Governor of Massachusetts. On the other hand, maybe the Sons of Italy, in a frantic search for the evidence they feared would prove Sacco and Vanzetti guilty, had offed both the messenger and the heir of the man who had donated the evidence to official archives. When the young heir changed his mind, the archives returned the evidence by armed courier. Both men were murdered. But the evidence did not show up. Even Doc's and Mary's house in Concord was ransacked in their search. Compared with intricate and complex BILLINGSGATE SHOAL, the first of nine Doc Adams mysteries, THE PENNY FERRY is as simple as a walk in the park. Fewer places. Fewer characters. Flashbacks are mainly to the life, times and politics of Sacco and Vanzetti. Doc Adams's personal and family (Calabrian wife and brother in law) sympathies clearly incline him to believe that the two anarchists had been framed and that the newly uncovered evidence would clinch that. If that proves true, then the judge at their murder trial was in cahoots with the prosecuting attorney -- and even the defense attorney, and Boston's Italian community would want revenge -- probably on Old Joe Critchfield, the only surviving evil WASP in the ancient conspiracy. And the jury foreman, a policeman, had hated Italians and made no secret of it. By contrast, Lieutenant Brindelli fears that the Sons of Italy may have murdered two innocent men during hot pursuit of evidence they believed would prove both immigrants guilty. This is clearly both a thinking man's mystery and an historical novel combined. But it is not lacking either in violence, intrigue, coverups of past misdeeds, local color and politics. THE PENNY FERRY would not be a Doc Adams novel without gourmet cooking, Doc's mostly chaste though lustful flirtations in his imagination and Doc's being on the receiving end of lumps and pain. The novel also spends more time than usual in Doc's dental practice. Doc's knowledge of chemistry also comes in handy in sizing up clues: e.g. when his messenger and his two German shepherd dogs are found dead in Lowell with nary a mark on their corpses. Oh, by the way, two human fingers were found in the mouth of the larger of the two dogs. Those digits were subsequently identified as those of an Italian mobster long thought dead. This is the fourth (of a total of nine written) DOC ADAMS thriller that I have read. I was beginning to wonder if Doc ever read a book. Hurrah! At the end of Chapter 6 Doc checked out seven books on Sacco and Vanzetti. He then speed read all of them in a couple of hours. And wife Mary did the same with one or two. All this on top of a fitness regime which usually sees Doc running eight miles a day, studying martial arts from time to time, doing much target practice: all of which bores him day in and day out. Only occasional mayhem makes life worth living. A good, well crafted plot. A historical novel in the tradition of Sir Walter Scott: two little anarchists at a time and in a mighty, anti-immigrant Massachusetts where and when anarchism was far, far from politically correct. A great feel for the landscape of metro Boston and environs. Plenty of clues, rather too few and too weak red herrings. Informative, easy reading. Enjoy! -OOO- Review by aohcapablanca =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= file: boyer_ferry"got an especially raw deal" (The Hot Item: introduction to the novel). file: boyer_ferry |