“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.
Lars, Thanks for turning me on to Kaminsky. I believe it was a review of one of his Lew Fonesca novels a few years back that introduced me to him. He has since become one of my favourite authors, right up there with Alexander Solzenhitzn. In both I find examples of and reasons for the human spirit to rise above adverse circumstances. However, Kaminsky tends to set his characters in less onerous circumstances while adding a bit more comic relief.
That’s the best kind of feedback. Thank you.