American Quartet Published Book Reviews See complete details about American Quartet including immediate purchase options. Never underestimate the power of failure.

Quotes

"A genuinely suspenseful story that will keep the reader enthralled."

"His plot construction is a marvel of ingenuity."

"Here's a mystery that expands the form artfully, convincingly and, so far as history is concerned authoritatively."
 - John Barkham Reviews

"A gripping thriller with Washington politics as a background and vivid memorable characters."

"well done."
 - Library Journal

"Ingenious."
 - Publisher's Weekly

BookPage eBook Review
by Gregory Harris

American Quartet cleverly mixes the elements of detective fiction with historical and political thrillers to come up with an exciting and satisfying reading experience. Readers will enjoy sharing his heroine's discovery and the development of her professional abilities and intuition as much as her unraveling of the few clues the killer leaves in his wake. Read the complete review.

The Pensacola News

Presidential assassinations have fascinated novelists since Lincoln's death. Adler has a new twist to the headline-making killing. He sets his fast-paced story in today's Washington where Fiona FitzGerald, a homicide detective who lives with a New York congressman, senses something strange when three people are killed at random. She believes there is a disturbing link and begins the track down. After the three killings she thinks a fourth is on the way and it will be a duplicate of the murder of Abraham Lincoln.

The novel is set among the rich and the powerful of the political world and the background is fascinating.

FitzGerald is an appealing cop-heroine and leaves the congressman - not such a darling character - so she may reappear in Adler novels. She would be welcome. She makes sense.

Los Angeles Times
by Nick B. Williams

Bloody Sunday

Why not lead off this week with a shocker, page by page a real shocker - American Quartet, a wildly kaleidoscopic look at the scandals and political life of Washington, D.C.? Only an Irish lady cop realizes that a schizophrenic killer, heir to millions and his mama's boy, is preparing to write his name indelibly if bloodily in American history as the next assassin of a President. To complicate it all, the lady cop's lover needs the assassin's dough to win a seat in the Senate. Wheels within wheels - a terrifying yarn.

High Point Enterprise

History, Mystery Fuse in New Suspense Novel

History and mystery are neatly fused in one of the best new suspense stories, American Quartet by Warren Adler of Chevy Chase, Md., author of "The War of the Roses" and "The Casanova Embrace."

The scene is Washington, where a mad killer reenacts the assassination of three American presidents: Garfield in 1880, McKinley in 1900, and Kennedy in 1960. To round the killings off to an "American Quartet," he is planning to kill the present President as a reenactment of John Wilkes Booth's shooting of President Lincoln in 1860.

Washington police have few clues since the first three killings apparently involved random victims: a little known artist shot in the National Art Gallery on the date of President Garfield's assassination, an Argentine political figure shot in the Pan American Union on the date of McKinley's assassination, a used car salesman killed by a sniper as he drove past the Library of Congress on the date of Kennedy's assassination.

Fiona FitzGerald, homicide detective on the Washington police force, begins to sense the historical significance of these seemingly random killings, especially the reenactment of the Kennedy shooting, and becomes convinced that the unknown assassin is planning to shoot the living President (never mentioned by name) on the date of Lincoln's death and in one of the great Washington theaters.

Can she save the President? Can she discover the murderer in time? Here is an ingenious ploy for an unusually good suspense story.

Adler knows his Washington and uses it for effective background. (He was one of the founders of the "Washington Dossier"). And Detective Fiona FitzGerald, takes us to two different Washingtons: As a mistress of a Congressman, she attends elegant parties at the home of Thaddeus Remington III, a wealthy party-giver and owner of a great collection of ancient arms; and as the police partner of a hulking black cop named Jefferson she sees the crimes, heroin sales and degradation of the city's slums.

Since the reader knows early in the novel who the "secret killer" really is and what his motives are, the suspense is engendered by our wondering how soon the police can figure out the puzzle and whether Fiona and her black co-cop can prevent the President's assassination at the theater.

The story sometimes moves slowly but the general picture of Washington life is intriguing and the final race against time is speedy enough.

New York Times

Notable Books of the Year - Crime

AMERICAN QUARTET. By Warren Adler. No mystery here about the killer but a probing psychological examination of a Washington socialite's kinky mind. The cops have to handle a series of apparently unrelated murders, and there is a down-to-the-wire finish that ties in with the assassination of President Kennedy. High-class suspense.

Glamour
by Stephanie Young

Some kind of heroine?

Move over Dick Tracy - here comes Fiona FitzGerald, female detective and main character of Warren Adler's whodunit, American Quartet. There really is a female member of a homicide squad - she's Judy Roberts, a ten-year veteran of the Washington, D.C., police force and the only woman permanently assigned to the homicide division - who gave the author technical information about female detectives. "I'm not Fiona," insists Roberts. "In fact, if I did everything Fiona does I wouldn't have time to work!" What's it like to be the only woman on an all-male squad? "It's like being the only person who doesn't speak French at a French Embassy party," reports Roberts. "You cope."

New York Times
by Lynn Rosellini

Detective Enjoys Fame as Model for Whodunit

WASHINGTON, April 18-Judy Roberts tucked a revolver in her evening bag the other night and went out to a glittery dinner party at a downtown restaurant.

"We have to carry our guns in D.C.," said Miss Roberts, a homicide detective who has become the town's latest literary celebrity as a result of a new Washington novel based on her experiences. "I went to Ronald Reagan's inaugural with my shoulder holster strapped under my evening gown."

As a 10-year veteran of the local police force, the 32-year-old Miss Roberts has been bitten, kicked and scratched by unwilling suspects. She has chased burglars, investigated murders and attended more autopsies than she cares to remember.

When a local author suggested that she would make a terrific character in a novel, Miss Roberts replied, "You've got to be kidding."

Nuances of Homicide Squad

"I'm serious," said the novelist, Warren Adler, who had asked the District of Columbia Police Department to help him locate a female detective.

Eventually, Miss Roberts agreed to brief Mr. Adler on the nuances of life on the homicide squad. The result is American Quartet, Mr. Adler's recently published mystery novel, whose main character is a female homicide detective.

In the tradition of Washington novels, the heroine, Fiona FitzGerald, not only foils a Presidential assassination plot but also has a love affair with a Congressman.

"I've never even had a date with a Congressman," Miss Roberts says, chuckling, "let alone had one as a boyfriend."

She is sitting in the living room of her apartment in suburban Virginia, grinning as she describes her life as the only woman permanently assigned to the homicide squad. On the job, Miss Roberts never wears makeup or curls her hair, and she always wears trousers.

But this is her day off, and her face is touched with rouge and framed in brown curls as she talks about the "decadent," who was "in rigor" with "stab wound through the left aorta."

How closely does art mirror life, in the case of "American Quartet?"

"If everything is true in that book," she says, "I wouldn't have time to come to work."

As it turns out, Miss Roberts spends more time with derelicts and thugs than with Congressmen, and more hours in the city morgue than at Georgetown dinner parties. Her working days frequently run around the clock and through weekends.

But Miss Roberts says she intends to find the time to collaborate with Mr. Adler on a sequel. "It is a nice break," she says.

The Evening Post (Charleston, S.C.)
by A.C.

A 32-yr-old female detective whose male relatives were mostly Irish policemen must overcome the bias of a Negro departmental supervisor to continue the investigation of a series of seemingly unrelated murders. Incredibly, the psychopath responsible proves to be a politically frustrated fundraiser who has meticulously reenacted three presidential assassinations. Before the highly regarded Capitol socialite can claim his fourth victim, the incumbent chief executive, the harassed heroine and her bitter black partner arrive at the Eisenhower Theater in spectacular fashion to gun down the culprit. The imaginative author's novel about the District of Columbia's residents is a frisk barnburner.

Library Journal
by MA-L

Washington, D.C. police officer Fiona FitzGerald is faced with the apparently random murders of two men, related only by the use of antique ammunition. When a third man is gunned down in a way that mimics the Kennedy assassination, she realizes someone is re-creating the assassinations of American Presidents and sets a trap for the murderer on Good Friday at Ford's Theater. Quartet is a gripping thriller with Washington politics as background and vivid and memorable characters (the killer turns out to be another one of those repressed homosexual mama's boys). Well done.

The Grand Rapids Press
by Robert I. Alotta

One who recalls intimately and precisely the events of November 22, 1963 - and the days of investigation that followed - will remember the bizarre elements linking President John F. Kennedy's assassination with that of Abraham Lincoln. But those frightful similarities spanning almost a century were only the tip of the iceberg.

Only four Americans have been slain while serving as president: Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and Kennedy. All were shot to death.

Warren Adler has taken the details of those four assassinations and projected a bizarre attempt to murder the present incumbent. We can be thankful his book is fiction.

Adler's researching of history is laudatory. He presents the little-known fact, for instance, that then-General James A. Garfield helped quiet the crowds on the day Lincoln was shot.

Even more refreshing are the characters created by Adler.

Fiona FitzGerald of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department, the story's central character, is sure to antagonize some women readers because of her demands and undisguised desires. Fiona is a dynamic individual.

And Adler's depiction of the black leadership of the police force will be protested by some.
Warren Adler has a big book on his hands. American Quartet, with its dramatic ending, is outstanding fiction.

Schenectady Gazette
by Shirley Peterson

Reviewer's Window

Look at the price of this book! Fewer than 300 pages for almost fourteen dollars [1982 original hardcover printing]. The book is set in Washington D.C. and involves members of the government. Maybe that tenuous connection with big spending influenced the jacket price.

The quartet of the title is the four Presidents who have been assassinated.

The heroine is a Washington D.C. cop named Fiona FitzGerald. The villain is revealed, early on, to be socialite Thaddeus Remington III, a history buff and failed Presidential candidate. (Generally I prefer to be surprised by the villain's identity but in this case a last-page revelation wouldn't work.)

Basically, what we have here is a man unbalanced by failure when he had utter faith in his success. Instead of becoming President he is an influential party-giver and source of campaign funds. Power is beyond his grasp, however, and that is what he lusts for.

Fiona is romantically entangled with a member of the House of Representatives. Their relationship, when the author permits readers to leave the bedroom, is indicative of Congressional insecurities, perks, and power.

Description of Fiona's professional life sounds like an expose of the DC police department. Fiona is young, educated, white, and female. Most of the other DC police are none of those. The evolution of respect between Fiona and her assigned bad-man partner, Jefferson, is very well done and quite moving.

As Fiona skitters around trying to make sense of the random killings, the villain is shown, again and again, in tumescent satisfaction with his own cleverness. His delight in the historically accurate killings is described before, during, and after the event.

I will agree that someone would have to be fearfully warped to kill as this man does. But I do not feel that the generally strong plot and characters are much enhanced by the author's recitation of orgasmic detail.

American Quartet's repetitive concupiscent scenes are a deterrent to readers who would otherwise enjoy the many attractive aspects of the story.

Pornography is, I think, that which crosses the threshold between titillation and revulsion. To each his own threshold.

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