Somebody Owes Me Money

Donald Westlake
Somebody Owes Me Money

Random House, 1969

Part of Forgotten Books Friday

NYC hack Chet Conway gets a tip from a shady underworld character to bet on a pony that should bring good money to Chet. Young cabbie, who happens to be an obsessive gambler, places a bet, the horse wins, Chet, happy as a horse (if horses could experience happiness) and almost $1000 richer, goes to his bookie’s apartment to get his winnings. The bookie is killed, the widow is screaming murder, and Chet suddenly is not sure who does he get paid from. And all bets are off.

In the beginning of the novel there has been a snow collapse in NYC. We survived a pretty intense snow collapse in last year’s October. It was two meters of snow in two days. And though NYC of the 60s is not small town Russia of 2010s, let me tell you that all that running around and racing through the streets as it happens in the novel is close to impossible. Not less impossible is also running around in summer clothes only. Why would Westlake need to create this collapse for his book? Argh, so much for realism in fiction.

Though it is considered as a comic caper, Westlake used a couple of new approaches more suitable for his serious enterprises. His Mafia-type characters started to have Italian names (and that is before Slayground; Westlake was there before Stark), their speech became closer to life. I think in this book mobsters for the first time for Westlake spoke with Brooklyn accent.

Once again the theme of corruption in the police reoccurred here, as it constantly were in Westlake’s previous books. This time it’s not some patrolman, but a homicide dick. One would begin to doubt if police in the US ever held a non-crooked cop. Still, I was skeptical, while reading, that a homicide cop would be bought (yes, history has seen some examples), and this cop would be bought by this particular family. Homicide detectives work in pairs, and it’s doubtful that Golderman could be useful to Mafia in this case.

I myself have similar attitude to police. Every cop personally whom I knew and know, are honest and hard-working man. I enjoyed working with cops, while I worked in paper, I enjoyed learning from them how their work is done. My school history teacher after some years in school quit, and had gone on to be in investigator, analogues to D.A. investigator in the US. While he was a teacher, he had been very friendly with me, we were always joking with each other, always messing and kidding around. I even supplied him with VHS cassettes, me, 13-year-old kid. Then he became sort of a cop, and died very early from a heart attack. Was he a bad man? Absolutely no.

Yet the whole police system, as always any system, is rotten to the core. Good people, evil system. And I don’t have any single reason to like this system.

That being said, I found it difficult to believe that Chet would go to Golderman for help, being on the run from the mob. Mob first rule is never talk to police. Chet, going to police, signed his death warrant (only that the cop was bought, and no one cared). Slippery plot move.

Another thing that made me wonder is Chet’s age. He’s 29, roughly my age, he’s a cabbie in NYC, and probably I am applying modern realities on New York of the 60s, but how many young men today in NYC work as hacks? Westlake clearly stated Chet’s age, yet for me the protagonist does seem older, maybe early 40s. His habits, his world view, his character features, they all scream at you: older!!! The protagonist’s occupations was also a useful plot feature.

I found this novel not in the least funny. I liked it fine, mostly because of the usual set-up of Westlake’s gangster stories, where the protagonist first talks to all other parties involved, and then gathers them in one room to reveal whodunit.

There were a couple of moments that made me smile (particularly the scene in Goldman’s house), but that is all. In fact, I laughed more reading Westlake’s serious works.

I liked Somebody Owes Me Money fine, but I’ve read better Westlake.

Rough Cut

Ed Gorman
Rough Cut

St. Martin’s Press, 1985

Michael Ketchum is a partner in a small advertising agency. Michael seems to be the only one who really works there, not only looking after the artistic side of the business, but also taking part in the creative process. The other advertisers, starting with Michael’s partner Denny Harris, are preoccupied by different activities: looking for mistresses on the side, stabbing each other in the back, scheming, drinking during working hours, at best, doing nothing.

Michael suspects that his partner Harris keeps the biggest client wife's named Clay Traynor as a mistress. If this secret will emerge, Traynor is likely to stop working with Michael’s firm, and the firm simply will go bankrupt. Michael hires a sleaze private detective to gather evidence on Harris. With photos from a private detective Michael goes to his partner to confront him and put pressure on him. In the Harris’ house the corpse of his partner greets Michael. Michael, scared, doesn’t report crime to the police, and soon someone kills another agency employee and another. Michael must find the killer before Michael will be the next.

After Rough Cut Gorman will write a few dozen books, but in 1985 this will be his debut. The circle of the novel's characters are only employees of an advertising agency, and the action rarely spreads beyond the office and apartment of the protagonist. This makes the mystery local, and the atmosphere stuffy. Everyone is a suspect, and the suspects die one by one. Could the killer be a secretary? The agency employs envious cowards and careerists that even secretaries are not to be excluded.

The intrigue expertly is stretched until the very end, and I can assure you, you will not guess who is a killer.

I also quite enjoyed the novel because of the presence of a bad private detective. If usually private detective is a knight on a white horse, a hard man, walking down the mean streets, and in these cases invariably P.I. is a main protagonist, in this book the private detective Stokes is an aahole, blackmailer and sissy, and not the main character either. I have not seen such disgusting private investigator in a long time.

Gorman’s prose is another pleasant surprise, not rough cut at all, the refined product.

«After my divorce, and before I felt much like falling in love again, I spent many evenings alone in my bachelor apartment feasting on Stouffer's frozen dinners and using self-pity the way other people used drugs. I also got into the habit of approximating a sensory-deprivation tank by sitting in the bathtub, throwing back several gins, and coming dangerously close to dozing off in the hot water.

Which is where I was three-and-a-half hours after somebody knocked me out at Denny Harris's house.»

This is conscious, adult, men's prose, surprisingly assured for the detective genre. Rough Cut is a pleasant debut.

The Golem of Hollywood

Jesse Kellerman, Jonathan Kellerman
The Golem of Hollywood

Putnam, 2014

LAPD Detective Jacob Lev wakes up after a rough night in his apartment with a woman he sees for the first time. She calls herself Mai, goes to take a shower, and then mysteriously disappears. The same day, on Jacob’s doorstep appear two men in suits, Paul and Mel, from the Special Projects department and tell Jacob that he is temporarily transferred to their department, to help with the investigation of a murder. For some time before these events, Jacob, after seven years in homicide, asks his boss to transfer him to a desk job due to depression, and the boss moves Lev to Traffic to work with statistics.

«For most of his adult life, he’d been a high-functioning alcoholic, although sometimes functioning was the operative word, and sometimes it was high. Since his transfer to Traffic, he hadn’t been drinking as much—he hadn’t needed to—and it bothered him that he’d blacked out last night.
Now that he was back in Homicide, he supposed he was entitled.»

Paul and Mel bring Lev to a house in one of the remote areas of Los Angeles. There have been found severed head of a man, a package with vomit and a few words in Hebrew carved in the table’s wood. Woman detective of Indian origin Divya Das at the crime scene explains to Jacob the situation. The body has not been found at the site, there are no signs of a struggle, too, and no other clues. Head of Special Projects (which Jacob has never heard of) Mallick says that Jacob is in charge of the the murder investigation because of his Jewish origin.

After an unsuccessful previous novel Jesse Kellerman, this time in tandem with his more famous father, shoots the bull's eye. The Golem of Hollywood’s genre can be defined as a Jewish novel about a serial killer, but it is better not to define it in any way. It does not fit in any genre framework, although composed of the elements of police procedural, serial killer novel and Biblical apocrypha. A good novel about a serial killer is very hard to write, it is very few people who can do it. The very definition of a serial killer novel has become clichéd. Kellerman Jr. until this book avoided genre conventions, while Kellerman Sr. did quite the opposite – he wrote quite a lot of genre books, unashamedly put them in series, where the number of volumes surpasses two dozens, perhaps. And reading this novel, you guess all the time what parts elements of the book the son wrote, and what the father. I have read, only one Jonathan’s book, but all but one of Jesse’s, so I will not be a good judge, though to me this novel’s style was very Kellerman Jr.-ish. Here we have Jesse’s witty dialogues and his nimble prose. The protagonist Lev here is also the heir to protagonists of Jesse’s previous books, he’s again a strange loner, confused and sometimes funny. Jesse’s father apparently came up with a serial killer plot, police procedural parts and Jewish topic, and theme of fathers and sons was close to both Kellermans.

Main plotline, the police investigation itself, is very intense and very reliable as far as possible considering the supernatural elements. The novel is written in the tradition of Michael Connelly, who also wrote (and writes) deep police procedurals set in Los Angeles. Detective Jacob Lev can be a geek or a daddy's boy, a man with complexes or an alcoholic, but he knows his business. All answers here are not taken from the air, only hard work brings results. Leo uses his head and his legs.

The plot is complicated to the extent. It is not simple, but the simplicity only harms books as this one. And if the novel didn’t have the Jewish line, the novel would already be outstanding. Jewish storyline, apocryphal, is mystical and pretty confusing, not everyone will understand it fully. It helps to understand the events taking place in the present, helping to find answers, but does not give clear answers. As a non-religious person, I was lost in the twists and turns of the Jewish line, and not only lost, but did not understand it.

And this lack of understanding is the understanding itself - understanding of the novel as a whole. «The Golem of Hollywood» deserves comparison with the two other novels, written by Russian writers. These novels are Master and Margarita by Bulgakov and Faculty of unnecessary things by Yuri Dombrowski. In both of these books the main plot line takes place in the present, but there is also a secondary line - the Biblical one. In these books, I did not fully understand the biblical line, but that did not stop to highly praise the contemporary line. The same situation is also with this book: the main line is so good that you can judge the novel considering only this modern part. (However, it is worth noting that the endings in both Master and Faculty are more powerful than "Golem"’s, although I do not think that stylistically Kellerman is weaker than Bulgakov and Dombrowski.) Biblical line gives the depth to the main line, and the entire book makes it something than was never written before.

In this novel, Jesse Kellerman first stepped on the genre territory, but all signs of the genre have been turned on its head. Superb.

The Whole Lie

Steve Ulfelder
The Whole Lie

Minotaur, 2012

Conway Sax comes back, this time plunging right into political intrigue. Savannah Kane, Conway's former lover, also a member of Alcoholics Anonymous group who are calling themselves the Barnburners, asks him for help. Savannah has a relationship with a candidate of the upcoming elections for governor. Someone blackmails a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and Savannah asks to find a blackmailer. Conway is not eager to help some rich politician, but can not refuse Savannah. The Barnburners are on the first place, helping each other, and then only everything and everyone else. Conway receives a check for a lump sum from the candidate, feels something’s wrong, but still takes the case - the money from the check can help Conway buy his business off his girlfiend Charlene. Then someone kills Savannah, staging her death as accident, and to reveal a chain of crimes for Conway becomes a matter of honor.

The first book about Sax offered a twisted plot and believable characters, but suffered from stylistic roughness. In The Whole Lie Steve Ulfelder polished the roughness without losing the suspence of plot and fullness of the characters. Conway Sax in this book has become even more sympathetic to the reader, thanks to the narrator’s talents in Ulfelder. Often crime fiction with an amateur sleuth (and Sax is somewhere in between an amateur and a professional sleuth for AA group) disappoints with its infantilism: the protagonist, having thrown all his usual routine, runs as a madcap, revealing a world conspiracy, putting his life at risk many times in the book as if forgetting the fear. Sax is also engaged in a dangerous game, nevertheless does not become irresponsible. He cares about his business, small problems of Charlene’s daughter, trying to find such middle ground, that his detective affairs doesn’t interfere in affairs of the heart. But it’s hard to carry through.

Ulfelder with this novel definitely will not bore you. The book not only entertains, and even gives practical advice, and it is always useful to read the book from which you learn something new:

«You wouldn't believe how hard it is to tail a guy. It's not like TV at all.

Barnburner duties had taught me the only way to follow a car was to stick your nose right up his back bumper, make sure you got through the same lights he did, and hope like hell he wasn't paying attention.»

Books about Conway Sax are the best there is in the genre today.

The Reckoning

Rennie Airth
The Reckoning

Mantle, 2014

Sussex, 1947. Someone shoots a retired banker Oswald Gibson in the neck, after putting the victim on his knees. A shepherd sees the killer from afar, but can not give a distinct description. It is only known that the killer was wearing baggy clothes and moved quickly, with youthful gait. Shepherd immediately called the constable, police began to surround the area near the river, but the killer seemed to dissolve in the air.

Investigate the murder in Sussex comes Scotland Yard Inspector Styles. Attention of Chief Detective Bureau of the country is attracted by the fact that in Scotland a week earlier in a similar manner an elderly doctor was killed in the operating room. Styles suspects that the murders may be linked. Gibson was a widower, lived modestly, had no enemies. Of relatives he had only a lawyer brother. However, coming servants recall that a few days before the murder, someone visited Gibson. After this visit, Gibson walked thinking about something and even began to write a letter to the Chief Constable of England, inquiring about a former inspector named Madden.

Styles does not know whether this unfinished letter is connected to the murder, but summons Madden, former Yard inspector. Madden, now retired, is mostly engaged in gardening and happy to help, but he doesn’t recognizes Gibson on the photographs.

There are a serial killer, killing seemingly unrelated people, an insightful inspector (in this case, former inspector), scattered through the novel clues, and even chapters, written from the victims’ point of view. Similar novels are published probably by dozens per week in England alone, and this one stands out with bright style and tight plotting.

Rennie Airth avoids hackneyed device when chapters from the murderer’s POV are written in italics. In the novel, there are a few scenes that are written almost from the killer’s point of view, but they do not cause the slightest irritation. The novel’s plot is linear, the story is told clearly, without trying to be "High Literature", which usually ends badly. Here the author’s ability to build the plot is obvious: there is the work of thought, there is footwork. Clues appear gradually, logical, and the investigation is conducted professionally. Each clue is checked out, which again emphasizes the author's skill.

By the middle of the novel it is clear where the investigation will turn that somewhat frustrating. Then the book departs from its course of the classical detective story, floating away in the direction of the country thriller. The killer becomes known, all that’s left is catch him. Airth quite believable handles the scenes of chases and surveillance.

The Reckoning is a nice mystery, not pretending to be something more. It’s a fun read for a couple of evenings.

Ordinary Grace

William Kent Krueger
Ordinary Grace

Atria, 2013

New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The narrator of the story recalls the events of that summer that forever changed him and his family. Frank Drum was then a 13-year-old teenager, a future hooligan. Frank’s parents are a minister of the Methodist Church Nathan, a veteran of World War II, and his wife, Ruth, not supporting her husband in his faith - she was once married to a lawyer, and after the war he decided to become a priest. Frank has a younger brother, Jake, who suffers from stuttering in public, and an older sister, Ariel, who graduated from high school and is now going to go to college.

Frank recalls that that summer was full of death. It all started with the death of the boy Bobby Cole, slightly retarded, who loved to play on the train tracks. There he died when he was hit by a passing train. The police ruled that it was an accident, the boy most likely went in a state and did not hear the train coming.

The second death in the town is not so shocking to people. While playing in the woods, Frank and his brother notice two men, one of them is as if asleep. Awake stranger beckons to the boys and says that other man is not asleep, he is dead.

The town has a few strange outsiders, which society does not accept. This is brother and sister Lise and Emil Brandt. Emil is a blind music teacher, a war veteran with a burnt face. He writes his memoirs with the help of Ariel Drum and also teaches her piano lessons. Lise Brandt suffers from mental health problems, she is unsociable, doesn’t allow to touch her. Nathan Drum often plays chess with Emil, and Jake in the garden helps Lise, he's the only person she trusts and allows him to touch her.

William Kent Krueger has taken a break from his regular series writing this stand-alone. Ordinary Grace virtually is a murder mystery, but in fact it’s a deep novel about growing up and life in a small town.

Death at the beginning of the novel is not woven in central intrigue, but plays on the atmosphere. In a small New Bremen the most serious crime is a drunken brawl in a bar (which we see as the beginning of the novel when Nathan Drum goes to jail to take his friend Gus). And when something more serious than a drunken brawl happens the clouds over the city start gathering. Nathan Drum only manages to read the service for the dead, and his speeches really grab the soul, making you think about life and death, not just a formulaic prayer.

The narrator Frank also has death on his mind. In his narrative there is a lot of wisdom and thoughtful observations about the state of things. Frank’s father profession appeals to the topic of religion, and disbelief of Frank himself becomes a counterweight to this religiosity. Religion is woven into the novel matter, but does not become the cornerstone of the book. This is just one of the topics, but not the main one.

An important topic becomes a social structure of a small town, its population’s suspicion towards those who stick out of crowd. Lise and Emil Brandts obvious are outcasts due to their physical and mental deformities. Except tolerant Drums, they have no one who had for them help and sympathy. People of Indian origin are also considered strangers in town, which was formed by the descendants of German colonists. Only because of their race Indian Redstone automatically falls under suspicion.

Krueger reproduces the sixties in detail, but these details are more convincing than some of the characters. So, rowdy component of Frank is doubtful. He spies on a neighbor who is walking around in the underwear, sometimes swears, makes his brother beat someone else's car with a bat, but it is rather an exception to the rule. Frank is still honest and fair boy, sympathetic and vulnerable.
Beautiful prose and the atmosphere of tragedy would not have saved the book, if it failed like a mystery. Krueger successfully solves the puzzle, playing by the rules: all the evidence is in plain sight, you only need to think hard. Krueger does not overcomplicate the mystery plot, but it’s not too simple either.

The novel deservedly won the Edgar for Best Novel (although the award seriously tainted its reputation in recent years, nominating such works that were not supposed to see the light of day at all). There is nothing ordinary about Ordinary Grace. Brilliant.

The Black Eyed Blonde

Benjamin Black
The Black Eyed Blonde

Mantle, 2014

Philip Marlowe still rents a small office in Los Angeles, plays chess with himself and charges twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses. The novel begins roughly where the final Chandler’s novel left off (finished novel, that is). In the office of a private detective comes a leggy lady, black eyed blonde from the title, and asks to find her lover, who disappeared two months ago. Blonde, Clare Cavendish, is a heiress of perfume empire, which her Irish mother owns, is married to a loafer, with whom she has an arrangement: he entertains with his girls, and she has her men, and they do not pry into each other's affairs. Lover, Nico Peterson, was a weasel, always running somewhere, working like an agent or at least trying to pretend that he is an agent. Peterson disappeared two months ago, Cavendish waited for him to show up or call her, but he never showed up.

Marlow, charmed by his new client, takes on the case. Detective finds the address of Peterson and his neighbor, an old man, says he has not seen Nico for several weeks. In the past Nico hosted parties every day, always with the ladies of different appearance, and then suddenly everything has quieted down. The neighbor mentions that two harsh looking Mexicans Peterson also looked for Nico. From his acquaintance from Homicide Bureau Joe Green Marlow suddenly discovers that Nico has been dead for two months, his body has long been cremated. Peterson was hit by a car near the restaurant where he drank all night. Driver was not found, a hat girl identified the body, and the next day in the morgue Nico has been identified by his sister.

Fans of John Banville can ignore this novel as belonging to the lightweight mystery genre (although Chandler is recognized not only as master of the genre, but also as just a master period), but fans of mystery genre may be in the dark about who John Banville is. Banville’s pseudonym Benjamin Black is known on both sides of the ocean, although Black hasn’t earned a special fame among mystery fans.
Banville here has tried to write not just another book about Marlowe, but to link it to the previous ones. The entire novel Banville actively reminds us that the main character is not just some nameless gumshoe, but the legendary Marlowe. Beacons-pointers are scattered around the novel limning it to Chandler novels: Banville mentions all the secondary characters with whom Marlowe crossed paths, from Linda Loring to Terry Lennox. This name-dropping only causes a feeling as if you read fanfic, not a book from master of fiction. Fans of Marlowe without unnecessary reminders will know the contents of the previous adventures of the private detective, but to newcomers these names will not say anything, no matter how many times you repeat them.

Banville mostly writes on his usual high standard, but after all, Chandler himself was always appreciated for his style. On a plot level The Black Eyed Blonde is a solid mystery with elements that Chandler’d use. The problem is that the plot is quite ordinary; not lower but not higher. Chandler himself was criticized for plot holes in his books, but he was good at other elements. Here, the most you will do is shrug, not cry with delight. And it's unfortunate because the plots of Banville’s books are complex and confusing in a good way, much better than the plot of this novel.

I can not say how good Banville imitated the style of the late author, because I read Chandler only in translation. I can see that there is less of humour than it usually was in Chandler’s books. Marlow’s wisecracks are fewer and less successful.

Banville’s Marlowe is more aggressive than Chandler, rougher even, he has something from the modern heroes of mysteries and thrillers. At the same time Marlow here is more literate, he allows himself elegant words and phrases, casually mentioning the works of literature. Chandler's Marlowe could hardly afford it, if only because he seems to be not so educated.

The Black Eyed Blonde delivers in patches, and the finale is frankly disappointing. Banville does not play by the rules: yes, the ending is unexpected, yes, the finale is tied to the previous work of Chandler, but the reader has not a single opportunity to guess the final twist. Chandler would not let himself to cheat.

Banville writes best under his own name. He'd better leave Chandler alone.

Little Girl Lost

Richard Aleas
Little Girl Lost

Hard Case Crime, 2004

John Blake, a private investigator in a small two man detective agency, accidentally learns about the death of a stripper Miranda Sugarman from the newspaper. Miranda died as a stripper, but when John saw her the last time 10 years ago, she was going to become a doctor studying in one of the colleges in the Midwest. Miranda was Blake’s first love, and he just can not leave her death to the police, which, in turn, unlikely to thoroughly investigate the murder of a stripper in a third-rate bar, given that there are zero clues.

Blake's most interested in how a future doctor could do such a striking way to the bottom of society. Blake begins to delve into the suspicious circumstances of the murder, gradually learning of the lives of the visitors and employees of seediest places in New York.

Aleas’s debut novel was written by the old paperbacks rules, adjusted for the fact that everything is taken serious. Every death is horrible and there is no feeling when you know well: the protagonist somehow will wriggle out of all his problems. A familiar background is here updated with modern technology: Blake uses the Internet and mobile phone.

The second and final novel about Blake a few years ago was rated by me so high that I named it one of the best recent mysteries in the field. Aleas knows how to stun the reader, and the novel’s final twist was so bold so for several days I wasn’t myself, turning the end in my head over and over. Little Girl Lost also offers a powerful finale, which strength is spoiled by some predictability.

The main Aleas’s achievement is the moral growth of his characters, which is very rare in serial books. Even Marlow, from novel to novel, remained unchanged. Blake by the finale is wiser and changes his way of life. And little gitl is lost forever.

The Last Policeman

Ben Winters
The Last Policeman

Quirk Books, 2012

Asteroid 2011GV1 is coming to Earth, collision is inevitable, the only thing that is not known – the area on the planet the deadly asteroid will hit. Awareness of death radically changes people's behavior. Someone immediately makes suicide, someone quits his or her job and starts working on a "Bucket List " - makes all the dreams and ideas reality, as soon as still there is time. Government stops most of its duties. Internet and mobile communications almost disappear, the use of fuel becomes a felony.

Changes affect state police as well. In the small town of Concord police departments are downsizing, and the number of detectives is minimized. Nobody sees any reasons to investigate the crimes, even the detectives. They drink coffee and discuss the impending end of the world. Most of the police service focused on patrolling the streets.

Death of an insurance agent Peter Zell initially is ruled as suicide. He is found hanging in the toilet at McDonald's, or rather «It's not even a real McDonald's. There are no more real McDonald's. The company folded in August of last year, ninety-four percent of its value having evaporated in three weeks of market panic, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of brightly colored empty storefronts. Many of these, like the one we're now standing in, on Concord's Main Street, have subsequently been transformed into pirate restaurants: owned and operated by enterprising locals like my new best friend over there, doing a bustling business in comfort food and no need to sweat the franchise fee.»

However, a detective attached to the case, Henry Palace is troubled by some discrepancies in the death of Zell. And while colleagues recommend Palace leave Zell’s death as a suicide, a young detective continues to dig up the truth.

Not being an expert on apocalyptic fiction, I can not say with certainty that this plot had not already been used in the literature in the past, but I do not think the idea is a new one. The initial premise of the novel has a direct effect on a mystery plot. Is death of Zell associated with end of the world or he had some other motives for suicide\murder? Actually a mystery plot is the meat of the novel, and apocalyptic background is an essential part and fuel of the story.

Each plot twist is invariably associated with a future disaster, suggesting that Winters is very skillful writer.

Clever mystery, a good start to the series.

Fade to Blonde

Max Phillips
Fade to Blonde

Hard Case Crime, 2004

Ray Corson virtually works for free for a local building contractor, and it starts to bother him. Corson came to Hollywood as a screenwriter, but also tried himself in the ring, in front of the camera, and now doing odd jobs. When an attractive blonde finds him and asks to help her with one thing, Corson immediately quits his job, knocking out the payment from his boss.

A blonde named Rebecca LaFontaine (of course, a pseudonym) offers a small sum of money for Corson so he would help her get rid of a persistent suitor Lance Halliday, and for get rid of him the girl means to kill him. Corson is not ready to kill and offers simply to scare Halliday with more peaceful ways. Halliday owns a small film studio, engaged in the production of pornographic films, as well as on the side deals drugs. While Ray is looking for ways to approach Halliday, the dead bodies begin to pile up.

It is not difficult to guess that Phillips wrote an homage to paperback novels from the 50s. The detective hero himself came as if from noir novel (eventually Corson considers killing Halliday and solving all problems), but the novel’s plot here is purely mystery. Phillips plays by the rules, scattering hints and pieces throughout the text, but doing without trickery.

Charm of Fade to Blonde lays not only in the plot and style. The novel reads more like a book from 40s or 50s that has been forgot and only now was found. It is perfect to learn to distinguish the original from the copy. Connoisseurs of old PBO novels will find the whole scenes and the individual words that you can read here, but never could find in the paperbacks of the middle of the last century.

«"You can touch one for a dollar, "she said.

"What?"

"Give me a dollar," she said, drying her back.

After a moment, I took a dollar from my pocket and handed it to her. She folded it twice and tucked it under the right strap of her suit, then swung my towel around her shoulders like a shawl. Beneath it, she lowered her left strap. She took hold of my right hand, slipped it under the towel, and placed it on her breast. It was heavy and firm. The skin was still cold and goose-pimpled, but I could feel the heat inside.»

This scene gives a particularly good idea of the differences between the two eras. I find it difficult to imagine that such an episode would find a place somewhere in the book of a detective imprint (although we can not exclude softcore publishers).

Fade to Blonde is a clever homage and strong whodunit.

Night Train to Jamalpur

Andrew Martin
Night Train to Jamalpur

Faber, 2013

India, 1923. The protagonist of the previous eight books in the series Englishman Captain Jim Stringer with his wife and teenage daughter is on secondment to the East Indian Railway. The main purpose of trip is investigating possible cases of corruption among top management of the East Indian Railway.

At the beginning of the novel Stringer takes the Night Mail train from Calcutta to Jamalpur in first class carriage with five companions, among them Major Fisher, who was set as a partner to Stringer to investigate corruption cases. Stringer does not trust Fisher, considering his dark personality, he is able to do anything behind Stringer’s back. Fisher behaves surly and despises all Indians.
In the car, our narrator meets with Jim Young, an Anglo-Indian, who is also working on the railway. At night during one of the stops someone kills Young, escaping in the desert. Everyone in the car have heard the shots, but no one has caught the killers. The lock on the door of Stringer’s compartment was broken and Stringer concludes that perhaps someone wanted to kill him, not Young. Someone calls the police, and Detective Inspector Khudayar Khan of the C.I.D. is assigned to the case.

Stringer takes an interest into this matter investigating available suspectes in his spare time. The third case, which Stringer also takes unofficially, becomes "snake killings" in the first class carriages on the Railway. Someone throws poisonous snakes, including king cobras, in first-class compartments. Snakes have killed more than four people and continue to kill. People become afraid to go first class, although trains are carefully checked. Stringer wonder who can do this, because only the master can control the snake and put it in the car without hurting himself.

In the main corruption case Stringer has two primary suspects, William Askwith, top brass in the traffic department, and Douglas Poole, his deputy. Both are Englishman, as other brass on the Railway.

Perhaps those who read the previous books in the series will have even more fun, but even as a stand-alone book Night Train to Jamalpur is quite a smart mystery. Martin throws the bait immediately, starting the book with murder, and then slowly spins all three (even four, if we take into account the matter with Stringer’s daughter) plotlines. The novel continues without haste, that in general it is quite clear. The detective has the three investigations at the time, one officially and two semi-officially, and he can not solve them all immediately. However, it turns out that the main plotline, corruption case, remains in the shadows.

The novel is written in the first person, the narrator Stringer generously shares with the reader the obtained information, and the detective and the reader are on an equal footing, having the same evidence and conjecture. Martin fills the book with suspects in all three investigations. Especially tickles the nerves that someone wants to set Stringer up for murder. All three cases are resolved quite logical and using deduction, although you have to admit that in the books of this kind everything is possible.

In addition to the suspense of plot, Martin delivers on the atmospheric front. Indian background is colorful and bright, details are believable, excursion in history is such that you feel the era, but do not feel that as if you read glossy booklet about India. Martin knows rails and sleepers, as his own ten fingers.

What's confusing is the main work activity of Stringer. He spends little time on his main job, driving around idly to and fro. You can see corruption behind this.

It is a good genre novel.

The Busy Body

Donald Westlake
The Busy Body

Open Road Media/Mysterious Press eBook, 2011
(originally published in 1966)

Al Engel is the right hand of the New York crime boss Nick Rovito. Engel was once an ordinary hood in the organization (read: the syndicate) until he saved Rovito from the coup at the top.

«If it hadn't been for the Conelly blitzkrieg, Engel might have kept drifting along in the organization for years. But the Conelly blitzkrieg came along, and Engel was in the right place at the right time, and all of a sudden the kind of future his mother had been talking about for years was dumped in his lap. As his mother pointed out, all he had to do now was take the good things that were being offered him. He had it made.»

The boss gratefully placed Engel closer to himself. Since then, Engel did not touch the dirty work: the organization has ceased to use violence, focusing only on the business side. But Engel's hands stayed clean only until the boss gives him the job to dig a fresh grave of an ordinary drug courier Charlie, who had a “grand send-off”. It turned out that Charlie was buried in a blue jacket, in the lining of which had been left the package of heroin valued at $ 250,000. Engel at middle of the night has to dig the grave, get the jacket, again bury the grave, but at the same time to kill his digging assistant, low-level hood. But things go awry.

The Busy Body became one of the first three Westlake’s comic capers after a series of gritty books (under his own name and under the pseudonym Stark). However, I can not say that the previous books by Westlake were deprived of humor. Another thing is that in the first four author’s books he thought of his characters seriously. Al Engel of The Busy Body, for example, is not very different from the protagonist of The Cutie. Only the hero of this book has many different features, from the phone calls from his mother to relationships with women, when he becomes the object of ridicule (from the reader’s point of view).

The tone of the writing felt lighter, but the described gangster world remained the same, and the plot is quite viable, forcing flipping pages. What is very good: the novel rests on not giggle and occasional ha-ha, but on a twisted affair with a missing body. Westlake’s humor is situational, which is very conducive to the plot.

The Busy Body once again proves that Westlake did not write bad books.

The Brass Rainbow

Michael Collins
The Brass Rainbow

Open Road Media/Mysterious Press, 2012 (digital)
(Originally published in 1969, by Dodd Mead)

Sammy Weiss, a small-time gambler and a loser, asks private detective Dan Fortune for help: the detective has to make a false alibi for Weiss, who in turn promises to pay. Fortune turns down the offer, but decides to check the story told by a fat gambler. The case takes a serious turn when a man whom Weiss’ve had a skirmish with because of the card debt is found murdered. A wealthy businessman is murdered, a suitcase with 25 thousand dollars in cash is lost from the apartment, and Weiss has gone in running. Fortune, though he does not like Weiss, suspects that the gambler is innocent and was framed. Detective's suspicions grow when he learns that the affair is mixed in a rich family, mobsters, the owner of a casino, professional "girlfriends of the rich men." Fortune will try to get to the truth, and the police will suspect that the private detective is harboring a fugitive.

Dan Fortune is a one-armed private investigator, and this is the second book in the series about his adventures. Fortune lost his arm not at war, but when he was a petty thief. The details are unknown. With only one hand, the detective is limited in his possibilities, so do not expect that he would beat someone to a pulp and shoot with both hands. But this does not mean that to Fortune will solve the case without leaving your office. Private eye will have to run, and fast, he will be shooting and chase suspects, but there will be logical interpretation of the information, too.

Fortune is not a joker, like Marlowe, he is not such a loner, either (here he will get help fro the police captain and morgue’s night watcher). He has a keen sense of social inequality, but he understands that it is impossible to deal with the rich. Fortune hekps Weiss with no money, just because they are on the same level of society - the poor, barely able to scrape a living (which does not interfere with Fortune’s words noted that prison cries for such men as Weiss, even for less crime than murder).

Collins writes firmly and without sentiment. The author gave his character a unique voice: Fortune is not Superman, not melancholy wise guy, just a lonely man in a big city.

It is impossible to guess the killers (and a few corpses there will be here), and the number of surprises and twists here is such that 90 percent of today mystery novels will seem primitive one-dimensional books.

«The Brass Rainbow» is not a rainbow novel, but like a rainbow after a long rain – such a joy.