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| Fisher Boy, The (Large Print) | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen Anable
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $14.91
You Save: $8.04 (35%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 1514417
Format: Large Print
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 307
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 1590584813
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781590584811
ASIN: 1590584813
Publication Date: May 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Spiraling from the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown has long been a place of freedom, escape, diversity, and risk. A gay resort, an art colony, and a working fishing port, it is at once gritty and hedonistic, beautiful and complex.
Boston comic Mark Winslow arrives with his troupe of improv actors ready to break into the Provincetown club circuit. But the town and the regionseared by drought and caught in the culture warare anything but peaceful this summer. Does the tall ship in the harbor bear an unusually large number of Scandinavian tourists? If not, who are the blond and ragged people insisting they are associated with it?
Then a public fight makes Mark the prime suspect in the grisly butchering of a Boston blueblood. Mark believes his choice is simple: find the killer or be charged with the crime.
Amid the clam shacks and craft shops, art galleries and nude beaches, undercurrents are pulling at the surface of normality, like riptides beneath seemingly calm water. Could the disappearance of a famous painter 80 years in the pastand the story of his masterpiece, The Fisher Boysomehow lie at the center of the whirlpool of evil threatening to extinguish Marks life? The Fisher Boy is Stephen Anables debut novel.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 STELLAR READING OF AN OUTSTANDING DEBUT June 13, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
For a writer who has spent much of his professional life writing business related articles Boston born Stephen Anable certainly knows how to spin a suspenseful tale as is illustrated in his debut novel, The Fisher Boy.
Province town, near Cape Cod is the setting Anable chose, as it is a place he knows well having spent many summers there. Thus, his story is filled with authentic sights, sounds and, yes, even aromas, that typify that area. He also wisely created characters familiar to him as he once was an actor, and a stand-up comic.
We may wonder just how much of the author we find in protagonist Mark Winslow who has brought an acting troupe to Province town, wanting to become a part of he summer club scene. Nonetheless, you know what is said about best laid plans. A prelude of dark days to come is the body of a dead dog left on a doorstep.
It's not long before Ian Drummond's body is found with his throat slashed. Ian is an old school friend of Mark's and they recently had a disagreement that escalated into a fight. Our wannabe entertainer suddenly finds himself the prime suspect in a murder case. Only alternative seems to be for Mark to find the actual murderer.
There is quite a trail for him to follow as it involves some of the bluest bloods in Boston, a weird homophobic sect, and a famous painting. Trying to tie all of this together is enough of a chore for Mark without the unique clique of characters who may or may not have some bearing on the killing.
Anable has crafted a compelling picture of a summer resort rife with skullduggery and secrets. Audiophile Earphones Award winning actor Paul Michael Garcia brings all of this to life with his skillful narration. His classical training in theatre stands him in good stead as he adroitly voices a disparate cast of characters. An acclaimed performer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, his voice is resonant, distinct, as he shapes and enunciates his narrative with appropriate shades of meaning.
- Gail Cooke
 Provincetown debut June 23, 2008
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Summering in P-town in hopes of jump starting a new career in improv, Mark Winslow instead finds himself looking into the wave of crime that strikes the community. Is it gay bashing? Fundamentalist fanatics? Eco-warriors? Or are the crimes unrelated? Well, they are certainly connected in that they all involve Mark's friends, and the deeper his investigation goes, the more complex and tangled the web becomes.
The Fisher Boy is an ambitious murder mystery, with enough plot elements to support 2 additional novels. Well written, infused with satisfying imagery, populated by substantive characters, the story speeds along, drawing the reader into its various puzzles and crises. The gay culture so long ensconced in P-town is portrayed believably, and the clash of cultures and belief systems is also well handled. It does makes for an enjoyable reading experience, but leaves little room for any substantive development. For example, the book's central image, the painting of the fisher boy, promises an intellectual element that fails to materialize. In like manner, the motivations of some of the miscreants are facile, but on the whole, implausible. Nevertheless, author Anable has produced a respectable and literate first novel, a welcome addition to the genre.
 As Like As Like As Like As Like As Like July 31, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
By the end of the book I was more interest in where the next simile was going to fall then where the plot was going.
This meandering story is told through Mark Winslow a gay man vacationing in Provincetown. Mark has given up his main career and had decided to bring his improv group to P-town for the summer to see if they have what it takes to break into the club circuit. But the peace and quiet are quickly broken when a dog is found murders on the mailbox of a wealthy man, a group of curious Scandinavian's tourist, who look more like panhandlers take over the town and Mark finds out more about his past then he bargained for.
Add in the death of another high profile community leader and a painting that tells a story of it's own and you have a book that wanders in too many directions at one time with a rather anticlimactic ending. If it wasn't for the last 20 or so pages where the author recaps the whole thing I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to tell you what this book was supposed to be about.
Can't recommend this one; maybe next time if he can figure out the one or two plotlines that he wants to stick with.
First time novelist did an outstanding job ... a great read! April 22, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
When a well-known member of gay society in the summer enclave of Provincetown is the apparent target of a hate crime, locals are quick to blame it on a new (and homophobic) "Christian Right" group operating out of a downtown storefront near the harbor. But the subsequent brutal murder of another gay A-lister a few weeks later causes the entire population, gay and straight alike, to wonder if this seemingly harmless propaganda group would go that far, or if it could be connected to a group of dirty, disrespectful hippie-like panhandlers who were rumored to be connected to a Scandinavian ship archored off the harbor, or maybe - they eventually considered - it could be one of their own.
In this atmosphere of confusion and suspicion we find Mark Winslow, a gay man who recently left his respectable day job and is in P-Town to try to get some gigs for his amateur comic troupe. With his hunky comic partner Roberto, his good friend Miriam and her young daughter, Chloe, and older friend Arthur (whose party was the target of the first incident), Mark angers the slow-acting local police by doing some investigating of his own, checking out Arthur's former houseboy, the conniving and devious Edward, and stumbling upon a mysterious clan in a nearby town, which could be the source of the panhandlers and a lot of other unanswered questions about what they are doing there, as well as what connection they might have to an early 20th Century painter, whose work "The Fisher Boy" - a personal favorite of Mark's - was the recent target of vandalism by a madman spouting Christian rhetoric.
An intricate but impeccably-woven and beautifully styled masterpiece of a mystery novel, revealing hidden town and family secrets that would later have relevance to solving the crimes. Loved it from the first page, a definite five stars out of five!
witty social commentary May 11, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Mark Winslow and his improv actors group leave Boston to perform in Provincetown. His summer stay starts upbeat over the Memorial Weekend when he attends a party thrown by his friend Arthur Hilliard; Mark anticipates meeting club owners as everyone who is anyone wants to be seen at this scene.
However, everything turns bloody ugly starting with the dead dog on the outside stoop; or perhaps as Mark suggests before that canine incident the Swedish tall ship the Vasa in the harbor was the harbinger of death. When Mark has an argument with Ian Drummond at a restaurant, he thinks nothing of it until later when he finds the brutalized corpse of Ian. Knowing he is the prime suspect in the killing of a Boston Brahmin, Mark investigates while noticing an influx of Scandinavian tourists but clues hint at the Christian Soldiers in town for the exhibition of the early twentieth century work of artist Thomas Royall.
More a witty social commentary on life in Provincetown, THE FISHER BOY is an entertaining amateur sleuth tale although the detecting takes a back seat to Mark's observations on life in the Cape during that fatal summer. The story line is character driven by Mark who seeks motive through his observations on the various diverse groups battling for supremacy of the Cape Cod town. Readers will appreciate this fine whodunit that is more a deep look at the discordance of diversity.
Harriet Klausner
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