With apologies to Dashiell Hammett fans (after all, I am one myself), I think the archetypal hard-boiled private eye will always be Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Every hard-boiled shamus to this day—and likely far into the future—has to touch his cap, one way or another, to that tall Californian in the trench coat. Even if “he” is a she, even if the writer updates the concept by giving him computer skilz, endowing him with a regular girlfriend, or moving his office to an airplane cockpit. Even if he doesn’t smoke and doesn’t drink, has adopted Buddhism, and treats his body like a temple.

Loren D. Estleman bucks that trend. He flatters, sincerely, by imitation. His Detroit P.I., Amos Walker, could be Marlowe’s love child, or maybe Marlowe was cryogenically frozen. Amos Walker wears a hat (or did in the early books of the series, though he admits here that he doesn’t own a trench coat). He smokes and refuses to worry about it, and drinks with enthusiasm. His office, in a seedy building downtown, is exactly like Marlowe’s as far as I can tell, except for the view.

The result makes for a very comfortable read for the hard-boiled fan. Why mess with a formula that works? Continue reading Retro, by Loren D. Estleman →

The Gem Collector (also published as The Intrusion of Jimmy and A Gentleman of Leisure) holds particular interest for the fan of its author, P. G. Wodehouse. Originally published as a magazine story in 1909, it captures almost the precise moment in “Plum’s” career when he began to discover the formula that would soon make him the most successful author of light fiction in the world. He hasn’t quite put the pieces together yet, but the elements are all here, in unfinished form.

The story is of Jimmy Pitt, London millionaire. In his earlier years, being a privately educated young man of high birth but low income, he made his living as a jewel thief in New York City. But now he’s inherited his uncle’s title and fortune, and he’s a reformed character. At least he’s pretty sure he is. In the opening scene, he earns the reader’s sympathy by observing a young man in visible discomfort across a restaurant dining room, divining that the idiot has taken his two female companions out without enough money in his pockets to pay the bill, and surreptitiously sending along five pounds of the needful, by way of a waiter. This earns him the everlasting gratitude and friendship of Spencer “Spennie” Blunt.

On the same evening, by one of those ridiculous coincidences which the author will learn to depend on not less, but more, in his later career, Jimmy encounters a vagrant on the street. And who does he turn out to be but Spike Mullins, a New York criminal (with a ridiculous accent) with whom Jimmy used to work in the old days? Jimmy, kind soul that he is, does not hesitate to take him home and put him up in his own house.

Soon afterward, Jimmy gets invited by Spennie to a house party at his stepfather’s country house. The stepfather turns out to be none other than Pat McEachern, formerly an extremely corrupt New York policeman. McEachern has cashed in on his graft and purchased an English estate. With him has come his daughter Molly, who used to be a friend of Jimmy’s until her father forbade her to see him again.

You can predict the general lines of what follows. I need only add that one of the other guests is wearing a remarkable pearl necklace, which sorely tempts Spike, and has even Jimmy working hard to suppress his old sporting instincts.

The later Wodehouse, of course, would learn to exert less effort to keep his stories realistic. He would learn that, although you can make a reformed jewel thief sympathetic if you try, it’s much easier (and funnier) to find a blockheaded young man of the upper classes and force him, through the blackmail of a ruthless aunt or the pleas of a desperate friend, to burgle the necklace—or cow creamer, or pig. And instead of having your character cool and in control of things, like Jimmy, make him pretty generally feckless, have him caught dead to rights, and watch him squirm. Then deliver him by a deus ex machina, perhaps a brainy valet.

Still, The Gem Collector clearly shows the elements coming together in Wodehouse’s imagination. It’s also an amusing story in its own right, written in the inimitable Wodehouse style, and a very enjoyable read. Suitable for all ages, if they’re literate.

Established, well-loved authors get a little more latitude in their product than unknowns. Though I don’t mean to imply that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy Dick Francis’s Banker, I won’t pretend that it’s a taut, edge-of-your-seat thriller. It’s pretty languid, stretching the action over a period of three years. We don’t even know for sure any crime has been committed until about half-way through, and nobody gets killed till after that. The only suspense comes near the very end.

But the signature Dick Francis pleasures are all here in abundance—a stalwart, sympathetic hero, a love story that doesn’t try to hog the spotlight, and an interesting look into a world few of us know. That horse racing is involved goes without question, but the education here is in the world of merchant banking—how loans are made (or refused), what makes for success in a chancey field, how banker princes live.

Our hero is Tim Ekaterin, who at the beginning is an underling in an English bank that bears his family name (though that refers to a different branch of the family than his own). But when his immediate superior is taken ill he’s instructed to take over the man’s loan decisions. This opportunity moves him up a level in status, and he gets an invitation to attend the Derby at Ascot, where he and the rest of the party see a brilliant horse called Sandcastle come in the winner. Later, when a request comes in from a stud farmer for a loan to buy Sandcastle, it seems an excellent investment.

But, as we learn (after a year or so), someone wants to sabotage the horse. And they will not stop at murder to accomplish it.

Aside from the pleasures of reading a satisfying story from a master storyteller, Banker had other rewards for me. I enjoyed seeing the world of business, specifically the world of banking, portrayed positively, with the bankers presented as decent people who root for their creditors’ success.

“I can’t promise because it isn’t my final say-so, but if the bank gets all its money in the end, it’ll most likely be flexible about when.”

“Good of you,” Oliver said, hiding emotion behind his clipped martial manner.

“Frankly,” I said, “you’re more use to us salvaged than bust.”

He smiled wryly. “A banker to the last drop of blood.”

It was also pleasing to read, in a fairly recent book, of a hero who refuses to commit adultery when he knows he could, and could get away with it. The celebration of sexual virtue is a rare quality in literature nowadays.

Not Francis’ best, Banker is flawed but well worth the read. Recommended for teens and up.

My review of Hal Colebatch’s Time Machine Troopers is up at The American Spectator Online. I’m rather proud of my title.

It’s true enough that John Sandford’s Prey series of mystery/thrillers is getting a little long in the tooth. Anyone who compares the early books with the later ones (like Storm Prey) will immediately notice that the hero, Minnesota state policeman Lucas Davenport, is now a very different man from the younger millionaire-cop who was so good at hunting down psycho killers because he was a borderline psycho himself. Today Lucas is a happy husband and father, generally purged of his personal devils.

But author John Sandford (actually John Camp) knows there are more ways to engage the reader than train-wreck psychological voyeurism. In Storm Prey, Lucas’ wife, surgeon Weather Karkinnen, is involved in the high-risk separation of a pair of Siamese twins when she happens to see a particular Emergency Room doctor in a part of the hospital where he doesn’t properly belong. She thinks nothing of it at the time, but when the drug theft that doctor has plotted goes sour and a hospital worker is murdered, the doctor and his accomplices hire a sociopathic skinhead called Cappy to murder her. Fortunately he fails in the first attempt. But Weather refuses to go into protective custody until the surgery (delayed due to heart problems in one of the twins) is completed. So Davenport and his team set up around the clock protection for her while trying to identify and locate the criminals. By engaging our sympathy for the twins and their family along with our concern for Weather’s safety, Sandford expertly keeps the dramatic tension at a high level. A typically nasty stretch of Minnesota winter weather doesn’t make things any easier either. Continue reading Storm Prey, by John Sandford →

A few years ago, the purveyors of crime, the crimemongers of the world, came face to face with Vancouver’s self-absorbed detective, Joe LaFlam, in the book, Bye Bye Bertie. Joe has returned for another attempt to steer an unsuspecting babe away from her potentially crime-laced life and to get the real bad guys. My Fear Lady picks up where the first novel left off. Joe is unfortunately wealthy, driving a limousine while he pursues pedestrians, and the wicked cabal of soon-to-be world dominators, Spelunkers Global, has kidnapped some innocent young man in order to keep him from his girlfriend. None of that, however, is enough to distract Joe from worrying about being afflicted with celibacy, mentoring his older collegues, and how he can save the world and his family’s fortune.

There are many things going for this story, but there are several things going against it too. It’s funny, and many plot points are well written. The conclusion is perfect, but getting there is a bit of a long. If Joe’s mental ramblings get old too soon, the story will drag. The story pokes fun at many pop Christian ideas as well, so you may have a sacred cow BBQ somewhere here. Overall, I thought the story could use more complication and more straight-forward humor. I appreciate Rick sending me this book, and I wish him the very best.

My review of Hal Colebatch’s Counterstrike is up at The American Spectator Online.

I remember there was a copy of Prester John in the library of my childhood elementary school (something which wouldn’t happen nowadays, for reasons which will appear). Its cover, as I remember it, featured a painting in the style of N. C. Wyeth (perhaps one of Wyeth’s own) of a bound white man being led across the African veldt by a black man on a horse. My tastes in those days didn’t run to African stories, so I gave it a pass. But in the years since then I’ve become a Buchan enthusiast, and when I found it for free in a Kindle version I snapped it up.

John Buchan was one of the inventors of the modern thriller novel, elevating the genre from the level of earlier (and excellent in their own way) writers like H. Rider Haggard to new realism, seriousness, and economy of language. His most famous work is The 39 Steps, adapted out of all recognition by Alfred Hitchcock, but he wrote other excellent novels. I’m particularly fond of the Richard Hannay books.

Prester John is not part of that series. It will never be widely popular again because, fine as it is purely as a story, it strongly promotes attitudes toward race which are (rightly) offensive to the modern mind. Continue reading Prester John, by John Buchan →

I picked up Open Seasonbecause Hugh Hewitt recommends the author, C. J. Box. It was an enjoyable enough read, but I wouldn’t put Box in the first rank of mystery writers. Maybe it’s just because I’m such a tenderfoot, not sharing the author’s love of the great outdoors (though I like Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger novels, which have plenty of fresh air, very much).

Joe Pickett, the hero, is a game warden in Wyoming. It’s what he’s always dreamed of doing, but things aren’t going smoothly. The pay is low and he has a wife and two daughters to support (another child on the way). On top of that, he makes a couple “bonehead moves” early on, like ticketing the governor for fishing without a license and (this is how the story starts) allowing a poacher to take his revolver away from him.

Still, he believes he’s getting the hang of things when the same poacher who took his gun away shows up one morning, shot dead on Joe’s wood pile. The only clue to his murder is a cooler containing the scat of unknown animals. Then two other “outfitters” are found murdered in a mountain camp, and Joe and two other officers get into a gun fight with the presumed killer. Continue reading Open Season, by C. J. Box →