For a little while, while I was reading the first Jimmy “Soldier” Riley mystery, I thought I’d found something wonderful to recommend to you. Alas, the execution did not live up to the promise.

Jimmy Riley’s nickname is “Soldier,” which embarrasses him a little. World War II is raging, but he never actually served in it. He’s missing his right arm, but he lost that in a gun fight in his capacity as a cop. Now he’s a private detective in Panama City, Florida.

But his mind isn’t on his work these days. He’s desperately in love – with the wife of a rich banker. He thought she felt the same way about him, but she broke their affair off one day, without explanation. Now he’s mooning around the office, and his partner is worried about him.

But one day Lauren, the Woman He Loves, comes to his office to ask if he’s been following her (he hasn’t). She refuses to hire him to investigate, but he starts looking on his own initiatve.

That’s the promising set-up of The Big Goodbye, the first book in a trilogy. Unfortunately, the following books, The Big Beyond and The Big Hello, don’t live up to expectations.

The first book is not only satisfyingly noir and full of period details, but it also contains a spiritual element that reminded me of Andrew Klavan’s Weiss and Bishop novels. But after the cliff-hanger that ends the first book, the rest of the story devolves into what seems like an aimless mess where Jimmy gets beaten up repeatedly, shot, and concussed, while pressing on relentlessly in the stereotyped hard-boiled style. He encounters gangsters, a serial killer, a German torturer, some sinister Japanese, and recurring unexpected betrayals (unexpected betrayals recur so often they get to be expected). The level of bloodshed and cruelty is pure Grand Guignol, and not for the faint of heart.

Another thing that bothered me – more than it should have, probably – was that Jimmy is always driving cars in this book. How does a one-armed man drive a car in the 1940s? No doubt there were special devices available to make shifting possible (even with an automatic transition, you still need your right hand to put it in Drive), but he makes no mention of having such equipment installed in his car. Anyway, he borrows other people’s cars and drives them too. This nagged at me.

When I was done I realized I’d earlier attempted another book by Michael Lister, who is a minister and routinely incorporates spiritual themes in his works. But I had quickly realized while reading that book that Lister is not orthodox, but a proponent of “follow your heart” Christianity. I can’t deny it gave me some satisfaction to observe that someone who rejects the doctrines of the faith also has trouble with the elements of hard-boiled mystery.

I will admit, though, that the books kept my interest, and I read them straight through to find out how they came out. The climax, however, seemed conventional to me, and if the author had deeper themes in mind, I didn’t discern them.

Serious cautions for language, sex, and oceans of blood.