Long Time No See: A Novel | 
| Author: Susan Isaacs
Creator: Cristine Mcmurdo-wallis
Publisher: HarperAudio
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $2.75
You Save: $37.20 (93%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  43 reviews
Sales Rank: 1689208
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 8
Pages: 5
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.3 x 4 x 2.6
ISBN: 0694526231
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780694526239
ASIN: 0694526231
Publication Date: September 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
In Susan Isaac's Long Time No See, Courtney Logan, former investment analyst, devoted mother, and Long Island housewife, leaves her home on Halloween night for a quick trip to the grocery store. Five months later, her badly decomposed body is found floating in the backyard pool, concealed by the pool cover. Enter Judith Singer, who helped find a murderer in Isaac's 1978 bestseller, Compromising Positions. Something about the Logan case doesn't make sense to Judith, and she becomes so engrossed in the mystery that she actually knocks on the grieving husband's door and offers to help exonerate him. Long Time No See draws on the best of the light, character-driven mysteries, like those by Janet Evanovich and Mary Daheim. Isaac's first- person heroine is impulsive enough to get herself into trouble, yet thoughtful enough to invite confidences. And her voice is appealingly funny and honest. "Since becoming a widow," she reflects, when faced with a twist in her investigation, I'd tried hard not to indulge in the lonely person's Happy Hour: talking to oneself. About a year earlier, in the drugstore, I found myself befuddled, dithering between a condom rack and a display of batteries, and was startled when I heard my own loud voice demanding: 'Why am I here?' But now I gave in and had a chat with me. Although clever and well-written, the novel's real strength lies in its characterization and in Isaac's leisurely unfolding of the implausible dark side of the perky blonde murder victim. This is a welcome outing from a deservedly popular writer. --Regina Marler
Product Description
Judith Singer is back! After twenty years, Susan Isaacs brings us back the heroine from Compromising Positions, her first and most beloved novel, and returns to a great suspense story set in suburbia.Judith's life has changed. She now has her doctorate in history. Her workaday hours are spent at St. Elizabeth's College, mostly squandered in history department shriek-fests. She also is a widow. Her husband, Bob, died one-half day after triumphantly finishing the New York City Marathon in four hours and twelve minutes. And although twenty years have passed without her seeing him, she still cannot get her former lover, Nelson Sharpe, of the Nassau County Police Department, out of her system.With Courtney Logan's dramatic disappearance, all eyes turn instantly toward her husband, Greg Logan, son of Long Island mobster Philip "Fancy Phil" Lowenstein. But since there is no body, there is no arrest. Then, in the less than merry month of May, Judith comes home from work, turns on the radio, and hears the Logans' pool man telling a reporter that he opened the pool and found...a raccoon? Not quite. "I see, you know, it's...a body! Jeez. Believe it or not, I'm still shaking." The woman in the pool turns out to be Courtney, and now it's officially homicide. And Judith comes alive! She offers her services to the police's chief suspect, Greg Logan, but he shows her the door, thinking her just another neighborhood nut. But his father isn't so sure: Fancy Phil may have other plans for her.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 38 more reviews...
 A little ambivalent, but still a fan July 10, 2008
I am not sure what it is about a Susan Isaacs book. Her characters are appealing, although they tend to be cliched, esp, when she is trying to portray WASPs, Southerners, or basically anyone who isn't Jewish and from New York. And she tends to repeat a lot of her witticisms. For instance, most of her books have to include something about someone's last name or maiden name being used as a first name, just as an example. As though to say, 'this was amusing in this book, I'll use the formula again in another book.'
I was a fairly uncritical fan, until once when I lent "Shining Through" to a friend. This friend said, "I had to give up on that book you lent me, I couldn't get through it. The author is SO wordy!" Once she said that, I really noticed that, despite being witty and undoubtedly far more clever a writer than many, Isaacs does tend to use ten words when five would suffice. Sometimes it's a bit hard to slog through some of her paragraphs.
This book is no exception to the above. Nevertheless, I read it and enjoyed it, as I read and mostly enjoy all her books. But unlike some authors, I'm never quite able to let go and really lose myself in Ms. Isaacs' books, always on the look out for some stereotyped character, some crack about someone's name, or some long, convoluted phrase that I lose track of halfway through and have to go back and read again.
 Audio Awful August 1, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I regret that I did not read a previous review that mentioned how awful the audio version is. The Author should not have been the Narrator. It was difficult enough listening to her normal Brooklyn accent but her mimicking other voices was painful. Her Southern Belle accent sounded like a Neanderthal (truly). As far as the story goes, her amateur detective has the pool-cleaning man from the house where a murder was committed come and give her an estimate on having a pool installed so that she can question him (I am not aware that pool cleaners also handle pool sales.) She also gets too involved in details (like the description of a lamp shade). Her attempt at humor is having a crime figure named "Fancy Phil" - gee, wonder how she came up with that. I could not finish the first disc and have decided to order satellite radio for my car to prevent future mistakes like this one.
Where HAVE You Been! May 25, 2005
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
My favorite newspaper, Nashville TENNESSEAN promotes Ms. Isaacs as: "Reading (Susan) Isaacs is like taking a good friend to lunch. (In fact, I saw a man reading a paperback at lunch in public just yesterday!) "You get funny observations on contemporary life, great gossip, and a great time."
Her best-selling COMPROMISING POSITIONS (1985) was made into a movie starring Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia. Judith was the sleuth and now, twenty years later, her neighbor has been found dead in the backyard 'covered' pool. The perky blonde victim, mother of two, had just suddenly disappeared on Halloween Night and the body discovered five months later. Judith sets out to exonerate the husband, son of a gangster. He does not trust her.
She is now a history professor and a widow. Enter former lover, Nelson Sharpe of the police department of Nassau County. Sparks fly, as no one ever forget her first love.
She has written RED WHITE AND BLUE, MAGIC HOUR, ALMOST PARADISE, and CLOSE RELATIONS. This is one of her best.
Book OK, audio edition terrible August 17, 2004
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is the first Susan Isaacs book I have read. I listened to the abridged audio CD version of the book. Ms. Isaacs is the narrator herself. It is terrible. I am unable to concentrate on the story - I am so distracted by her voice. She tries to do "accents" of some of the characters - all the accents turn out to be caricatures - of southern accents, of Eastern European, of Brooklyn, etc. It is almost unlistenable. Do yourself a favor, Ms. Isaacs - save the narration for the professionals!
 pulled me in like a fish to the bait February 13, 2004
I really enjoyed this book. It took me a little bit to get into the story but when I did, I kept on reading until I finished the book. Courtney Logan, who retired from a financial occupation to stay home with her family and, as a sideline, had developed a small business of her own, has disappeared. She went to get some apples and although her vehicle was found in the garage she disappeared. Five months later her body is found in the pool under the pool liner with two bullet wounds to her head. Judith, who is a history teacher and had lost her husband two years earlier, is a curious person. Since the loss of her husband she has been at loose endes and finds she needs something to give her life meaning. Years ago she had helped solve a mystery and felt the same stirrings in her to help get to the bottom of this one. During the other case, she had an affair with a cop for six months and then broke it off because they didn't want to hurt their families and now he, Nelson Sharpe, is back on the scene. They still have that old attraction to each other but will they follow their desires? The police are looking at the husband but she doesn't think he did it and goes to him, Greg Logan, to offer her assistance. He runs her off, but his father, "Fancy Phil" Lowenstein, a mob boss, finds out and asks her to help. Greg had changed his name so that people wouldn't know who his father was and be judged because of his father's occupation. He was trying to lead a clean, honest life. Judith questions several of Courtney's friends and acquaintances
and finds a wide variety of descriptions of what kind of person Courtney was like. Each person seemed to see her a little differently. Who was she? Judith keeps digging for the truth and finds more questions than answers. She portrays her characters in a realistic manner with a good dose of humor, by which I mean, they are colorful characters who could have had better morals, but people we see all around us at times. Hopefully not as frequently as we read in the book, but then this is only a book. I highly recommend the book. It is very entertaining.
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