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    Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime
    Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime
    Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime

    Written by John Dunning

    Narrated by Boyd Gaines

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Widely acclaimed for his groundbreaking crime novels Booked to Die and The Bookman's Wake, award-winning author John Dunning triumphantly returns with a riveting new thriller that takes us back to the summer of 1942, when radio was in its prime, when daylight saving time gave way to "wartime," when stations like WHAR on the New Jersey coast struggled to create programming that entertained and inspired a nation in its dark hour.

    Into this intense community of radio artists and technicians in Regina Beach, New Jersey, come Jack Dulaney and Holly Carnahan. They are determined to find Holly's missing father, whose last desperate word came from this noisy seaside town. Holly sings like an angel and has what it takes to become a star. Jack -- a racetrack hot-walker and novelist who's hit every kind of trouble in his travels from sea to sea -- tries out as a writer at WHAR and soon discovers a passion for radio and a natural talent for script writing.

    While absorbing the ways of radio, from writing to directing, he meets some extraordinarily brave and gifted people who touch his life in ways he could not have imagined -- actresses Rue, Pauline, and Hazel; actor-director Waldo, creator of the magnificent black show Freedom Road; and enigmatic station owner Loren Harford, among others.

    Jack's zeal for radio is exceeded only by his devotion to Holly, who needs his help but who is terrified for his safety. Strange things are happening in Regina Beach, starting with an English actor who walked out of the station six years ago and was never seen again. And Holly's father is gone too, in equally puzzling circumstances. As Jack and Holly penetrate deeper into the shadows of the past, they learn that someone will do anything, including murder, to hide some devastating truths.

    In a stunning novel that transcends genre, John Dunning calls upon his vast knowledge of radio and his incisive reading of history to create a poignant, page-turning work of fiction that sheds new insights on some of the most harrowing events of the twentieth century. Like E. L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate or Caleb Carr's The Alienist, Dunning's brilliant tale of mystery, murder, and revenge brings to life another time, another place, another world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJan 1, 2001
    ISBN9780743519724
    Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime
    Author

    John Dunning

    John Dunning (1942–2023) revealed book collecting’s most shocking secrets in his bestselling series of crime novels featuring Cliff Janeway: Booked to Die, which won the prestigious Nero Wolfe Award; The Bookman’s Wake, a New York Times Notable Book; and the New York Times bestsellers The Bookman’s Promise, The Sign of the Book, and The Bookwoman’s Last Fling. He also wrote the Edgar Award–nominated Deadline, The Holland Suggestions, and Two O’Clock, Eastern Wartime. An expert on rare and collectible books, he owned the Old Algonquin Bookstore in Denver for many years. 

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    Reviews for Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime

    3.5/5

    100 ratings11 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Cheesy, hard to follow and an underwhelming ending. Not a bad idea just not one of his better books.
    • 3/5
      I read about half. I felt that not enough was revealed at that point about whatever was going on. I liked the characters and the information about radio, but felt impatient with the plot.
    • 4/5
      BOTTOM-LINE:Fantastic view of a wartime radio drama.PLOT OR PREMISE:The year is 1942, and Jack Delaney is working as a writer for the local radio station where weird things happen, like actors going missing and potential German spies hiding in plain sight..WHAT I LIKED:The story starts off confused, and a hint of someone in trouble. Delaney has to escape a chain gang to help a woman he loves, even if she is already spoken for in his mind. And the trail leads to a radio station on a coastal town where he gets work. At that point, the story is three-fold -- a mystery involving German spies, a love story of sorts, and him learning about the radio busiiness as a writer. The radio business part is awesome..WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:The German mystery is confused and the love story doubly so. Most of it makes very little sense and is more "hinted at" than "made real"..DISCLOSURE:I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the author, nor do I follow him on social media.
    • 3/5
      The best part of the book was the history of radio. There was the hope that radio in the forties was on the brink of something great but it was being dumbed down for the masses. The radio station in this story WHAR was going to be ground breaking. Radio never achieved the dream. But the dream was nice while it lasted. Television has the same struggles.
    • 3/5
      We both read this. Javaczuk liked it; I liked bits of it, enough to finish the book, but it was slow reading.Interesting historical perspectives, but rather dry at times. I liked it more when the author focused in on the Holly story, rather than the scripts. But I'm a romantic at heart.
    • 4/5
      Not what I was expecting. What I thought this would be, from the book description, and what I wanted was something along the lines of (though probably more serious than) … oh dear, this will take a little searching. AMC series, radio station – Ah: Remember WENN (1996 – 1998). I did, in the end, remember. "… Set at the fictional Pittsburgh radio station WENN in the early 1940s, it depicted events (both dramatic and comic) in the personal and professional lives of the station's staff in the era before and during World War II." Yes. I'd like some of that, please. (Seriously, I'd love another book set in a 40's radio station. I'll have to do some hunting.) The book description talks about "an English actor who walked out of the radio station six years ago and was never seen again" – I love those stories. There's something about a story about a man who enters a lane and never comes out the other end … it's as good as a locked room murder. The story Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime begins to tell is more of a conspiracy tale, involving men in dark glasses and clandestine surveillance and secret identities, none of which seems to have anything to do with the war going on. About a third of the way in it – and Jack Dulaney, the main character – finally settled into WHAR radio in New Jersey, and it started being part of what I wanted, in spades: behind the scenes in 40's radio. It was wonderful, and made me very glad I stuck it out. Jack – or Jordan Ten Eyck, as he calls himself in this new life – is something of a wunderkind; he always wrote, and now adapts to radio drama like a pony to a field of clover, and he's amazing at it. A little too amazing, to tell the truth; the definitions of "Mary Sue" (in this case Gary Stu) kept going through my mind every time he knocked out another stunning script in an hour and a half, and every time he flouted the rules and was barely chastised when anyone else would have been fired and blackballed. He even marvels about how he's running the place in just a couple of months; it's a bit much. Particularly in conjunction with how his story ends … For me it took a very long time to click into gear. There were a few storylines being juggled here, and I was somewhat disappointed that the one I was most interested in was given rather short shrift, and was, in fact, cut off. The ending wasn't what I would have wanted. I enjoyed the book – but I would have had a lot more fun with it if the radio setting had been the star.
    • 3/5
      We listened to this book (read by the wonderful Boyd Gaines) on a long car ride, and I'd say if it weren't for the need to stay occupied for 11 hours I don't think I would have stuck with it. We found the plot to be overly contrived and convoluted, and even in an abridged version too long by about 30%. I was particularly disappointed as I've been a fan of Dunning's Cliff Janeway series. Not terrible, but wish I'd picked something different this time.
    • 3/5
      Historical mystery; decent work.
    • 4/5
      After reading about 200 pages I realized I had lost track of the characters, even though I cared about them and wanted to understand their story. I started over and wrote a few notes as I read the second time. I'm so glad I did. I was intrigued by Jack and Holly, Holly's father and grabbed by the frenetic activity of war time radio. Dunning's enthusiasm for and knowledge of radio shines through but does not detract from the characters. I know of no other book that captures the fear of the German attack along the eastern seaboard as well as this story does. Perhaps not Dunning's best but certainly worth reading.
    • 2/5
      Started great, but sort of went conventional by the end.
    • 2/5
      Interesting but not as much fun as the book scout mysteries.