Jeremiah Healy (1948-2014)

Like many other writers I was shocked to learn Jeremiah Healy passed away recently. I loved his work, having picked up the first John Francis Cuddy books because I had read most Spenser books and was looking for something similar. Of course, besides the Boston PI thing there's little they really had in common. The Cuddy books had their own style and Cuddy wasn't the superman Spenser was.
So sad that now both Robert B. Parker and Jeremiah Healy have passed away.
I will always be grateful for the blurb he provided for my Noah Milano books:
 "J. Vandersteen takes us back to the glory days of pulp fiction. And I mean the genre, NOT the movie. His Noah Milano character rings completely true as a tough, lone-wolf private."

That goes to show you what a wonderful man he was and how friendly he was to his fellow writers, always ready to help them along.


He will be missed by readers, writer and family.

Swan Dive (John Francis Cuddy) by Jeremiah Healy

We're all lucky Open Road is now offering the John Cuddy series in ebook format so we can all enjoy this high-quality series again.


In this one John is hired to play bodyguard for a woman who wants to divorce her cruel husband. When the husband is found dead along with a hooker Cuddy is suspected of these killings. The PI is forced to investigate these deaths to prove his innocence.

Jeremiah Healy shows us how great the nineties PI's were with a great, intelligent plot, some non-gratuitous violence and great characters. What makes this one especially interesting in the way Cuddy decides to make some decisions that are quite morally ambiguous, showing us all a good PI should be interested in justice more than the law.

An example for everyone trying to write a good PI novel...