Dead Flowers

Written by E. Richard Johnson, an Edgar Award winner, who is currently serving a forty-year sentence in Stillwater State Penitentiary in Minnesota, this novel is as bold and real as tomorrow's headlines--Jacket.
The fifth and final Tony Lonto mystery and also the author’s last book.
I
read the first Tony Lonto mystery, SILVER STREET, for which the author
won the 1969 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. As a
debut novel, its strengths were its realistic settings and vivid (POV
narration) characterizations. The story was somewhat creaky, in part
from the multiple character POV narrations and Johnson was never able to
elevate the story with fresh plot points as someone like Ed McBain was
usually able to do in his 87th Precinct stories.
With DEAD
FLOWERS, Johnson was by now able to write a much tighter story. The
story begins with the murder of a florist which is complicated by the
looting of his belongings by a street person soon after the murder,
making for a nightmare of a crime scene. As Lonto and his partner puzzle
over the why of this murder, an off-duty detective is murdered. There
are uncomfortable hints that the detective may have been involved in a
feud between rival drug gangs. Soon another detective is murdered and
two detectives from the city’s Narcotics Squad are taking an interest
that may be as much personal as it is professional. Lonto is at sea
throughout much of the story regarding the why behind any of these
murders and how they are (if at all) connected. Suspense is derived not
from who the bad guys are, but how everyone is connected (or not) in a
drug trade where all the players and how they conduct their business are
known. The reader knows before Lonto what is going on (mostly), but it
is never clear how the story will resolve itself. These are the mean
streets of an unnamed Midwestern city and one is never quite sure who
will turn out to be your most dangerous enemy.