“I don’t think so, but I promised a guy I’d turn myself in. I haven’t got much to sell but a body that’s ready for scrap, a brain that doesn’t work half the time, and my word. I can’t count on the body and brain, but my word has held up pretty well.”

That classically hard-boiled line comes from another of Stuart M. Kaminsky’s comic noirs, You Bet Your Life, in which Toby Peters, threadbare private eye to the stars, does a job for Chico Marx and tangles with Al Capone and Frank Nitti. A certain suave Englishman also shows up, but I’ll just leave him for a surprise.

It’s February, 1941, and Toby Peters has traveled to Florida to ask a favor of Al Capone. A Chicago gangster is threatening to kill Chico Marx, whom he claims owes him a big gambling debt. That’s not unbelievable in Chico’s case, but he swears this isn’t one of his. Capone, only intermittently sane, sends him to Chicago with a recommendation that may or may not do him any good, and before Toby even finishes his train ride, a guy is dead.

Fighting a bad cold all the way, Toby runs down leads through a frigid Windy City, dodging machine gun bullets and encountering mobsters, crooked cops, and a pretty girl who takes him in like a stray dog. Eventually the Marx Brothers show up, and act pretty much like you’d expect them to.

It’s all great fun, especially for lovers of movies and detective stories. I’ve never met a Toby Peters book I didn’t like, and this one was a great time.

The usual cautions for language and adult situations apply. Recommended.

I’ve told you often that, for me at least, Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine is one of the internet’s great pleasures. What should I expect, I wondered, from a novel by Dr. Boli? The result, not really surprisingly, is… a very odd reading experience. Amusing, enigmatic, possibly profound, and even – sometimes – moving, The Crimes of Galahad is a book like no other you will read this year. I’m pretty sure I can say that without fear of contradiction.

The Crimes of Galahad purports to be the memoirs of Galahad Newman Bousted, “the wickedest man in the world.” This is his own account of the misdeeds which brought him to conspicuous wealth and social prominence without anyone, even his wife or his most intimate friends, suspecting his evil machinations.

Galahad Bousted starts out as the son of a humble stationer in 19th Century Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Frustrated in his desire to motivate his father to agree to his plans for expanding the business, he falls under the influence of a French book (not actually the book itself, but a magazine review of it) which convinces him that the only way to achieve success is to devote himself to ruthless evil. In pursuit of this goal, he works long hours, finds ways to please his customers, and makes himself agreeable, even to people he doesn’t like much.

I’m tempted to describe The Crimes of Galahad as a parody, but it’s a parody of a very subtle kind. If I were to try to explain the joke to you, I’d not only spoil it, I’m not sure I’d truly convey the point (I’m not even sure I really figured it out). In a way, the best comment on this book might be to simply read Luke 16:1-9.

This is a book that will be appreciated by extremely intelligent readers (it will help if they’re smarter than me). That recommendation might be bad for sales, I fear, but nevertheless I recommend The Crimes of Galahad.

I read a book about the Shetland Islands quite a few years back, in the ‘80s. I’m interested in the old, remote Viking outposts, and Shetland seemed like the kind of end-of-the world place where a loner like me would be right at home. To judge by Death on a Longship, things have changed since then, mostly because of North Sea oil. The islands are rich now, their inhabitants snug in new houses, with satellite TV and the internet.

The appeal of a story about a murder on a replica Viking ship, against a Shetland backdrop, was irresistible to me, in spite of my old prejudices against women writers (their male characters are often pretty weak), and the fact that this is a story about a woman in a traditional male job – in this case skipper of the Viking ship.

But I was pleasantly surprised. Death On a Longship was a very engaging mystery story, not top drawer but extremely good.

Cass Lynch is the main character and narrator. A native of Shetland, she defied the wishes of her businessman father and (French) opera singer mother to become a sailor. The death of her lover in an accident at sea some years back left her traumatized, but she’s now landed the great opportunity of her life. An American film company wants to make a movie about Gudrid the Far-traveled, an Icelandic saga heroine, in Shetland, and she’s landed the job of captaining the ship. It’s the first time she’s been back in Shetland since she ran away to sea, and there’s some awkwardness in reacquainting herself with old friends, and with her father, who is seeing a young American woman from the film company (her mother returned to France years ago). Continue reading Death on a Longship, by Marsali Taylor →

It’s always embarrassing to admit that I just don’t get a book. But honesty requires me to say that Bye Bye Bertie by Rick Dewhurst pretty much mystifies me. It’s a parody on hard-boiled detective novels, but also a parody on evangelical Christian culture, by a Christian writer. For me, it raised more discomfort than laughter. Maybe I don’t get it because I’m too close to the subject.

Joe LaFlam, the hero and narrator, is a Seattle private eye. A Christian private eye, who lives with his mother and makes his living as a cab driver. Except that his real name is John Doe, and he actually lives in Vancouver, BC, which he insists is Seattle. One day a beautiful (Christian) dame named Brittany Morgan walks into his office, to ask him to find her sister Alberta (Bertie), who has been kidnapped by Druids. He takes the job largely in the hope of winning Brittany as a Christian wife. The hunt leads him on an improbable, slapstick search through Seattle’s (Vancouver’s) back streets, where he encounters a hit man working for a world government conspiracy, who keeps trying (unsuccessfully) to kill him. As well as several other guys who may have been his father (before they were Christians).

It’s all very strange. Lots of jokes are made about popular American Christian culture, which certainly has earned a lot of ribbing.

But I didn’t know how to take the story as a whole. Joe is a sympathetic character, but he’s clueless and heavily delusional. He doesn’t even know what country he’s in. I’m kind of uncomfortable with seeing him set up – it would seem – as some kind of representative evangelical. Maybe we deserve that. But it seemed excessive.

But maybe I just don’t get it.

Suitable for most readers. I can’t either recommend it or dis-recommend Bye Bye Bertie.

This is the third Sean O’Brien novel by Tom Lowe that I’ve read, which tells me that I must like the books. Yet I see all kinds of flaws in them. So I guess the takeaway must be that, for me, Lowe is a natural storyteller with a genuine talent. But he could use some seasoning.

The Butterfly Forest opens, after some preliminaries, with hero Sean O’Brien, a former Miami detective with some kind of mysterious military background, observing a man stalking two women in a mall parking lot. He intervenes to save them from kidnapping, but the assailant gets away. Both women, mother and daughter, are quite attractive, and Sean (a widower) becomes their friend, even pondering asking the mother out. But the predator from the parking lot was not just a crime-of-opportunity pervert. He has the daughter, a student entomologist, in his sights because she saw something she doesn’t even know she saw.

Sean O’Brien is an interesting and engaging character – low-key and laid back, but capable of very efficient violence when it’s needed. Author Lowe has endowed him with a very appealing habitat, dividing his time between an old cabin on the edge of Ocala National Forest and the marina where he keeps his fishing boat, and where good and faithful friends live. He also keeps a pet dachshund, Max, whom he cares for with appealing devotion.

The weaknesses are in the writing. I thought the plotting was better this time than in at least one of the previous books, but I was troubled by repeated infelicities in the prose. People say things like “as you know” in conversation, which real people almost never say. And the exposition is sometimes just awful, as in “His physical periphery subtly spoke of a body language that was rough but understood.”

I blame our times, in a way. In the old days, a good storyteller like Lowe would have paid his dues in the pulp magazines, getting ruthlessly red-penciled by carnivorous editors at 3 cents a word. Then he’d have worked with an equally pitiless editor at a publishing house. But nowadays, publishing his own work, he’s missed professional boot camp, and has no one to tell him when he’s right and when he’s wrong.

And yet I’ve read all three novels. That’s got to mean something.

Another strange thing about the Sean O’Brien series is that the author openly appeals to the spiritual and supernatural. Sean himself says that he’s learned to value his gut feelings above the evidence, which seems strange by the standards of traditional mysteries. He sees visions too, from time to time. I’m not sure if I like this or not.

Moderately recommended. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.