FFB Review: The Splintered Paddle by Mark Troy

For this really and absolute final Friday in May 2019, I remind you of The Splintered Paddle by Mark Troy. I first told you about this one five years ago in the review below. I remind you of this excellent book today. I also suggest you check out the full list of reading suggestions over at Todd Mason’s blog.

Private Investigator Ava Rome has no idea in the beginning that she is being hunted. She has no idea at all a man from her distant past is in the islands watching her every move. Fantasizing over and over again what he is going to do to her once he finally gets her alone. His name is Norman Traxler and he is coming for her--- after he eliminates whatever she cares about a chess piece at a time.

Ava's latest client, sent by Moon Ito, is a young woman named Jenny Mordan. Battered an assaulted by a corrupt cop named Ron Nevez she wants and needs Ava's help. The fact that Jenny is a freelancer in the world's oldest profession is not a factor for Ava Rome. Jenny is defenseless and Ava's business is to protect the defenseless as it was under Kamehameha the Great before the annexation of the islands by the United States in 1898.  That first law of King Kamehameha, the law of the splintered paddle, is still ingrained in the islands and its people and serves as the very personal mandate of what Ava Rome does each and every day. The defenseless will be guaranteed from harm--period.  Using your badge as a weapon is considered official suppression and Ava's isn't about to put up with that.

That issue isn't the only thing she isn't about to put up with in this complicated mystery featuring multiple story lines. Written by Texas author Mark Troy who spent a number of years in Hawaii before moving to Texas, this new series features an intense take no prisoners heroine committed to solving mysteries from the past and present despite the many complications involved with both. Ethical and principled, willing to go it alone if and when she has to, Ava Rome always advances and never retreats. That might be something that comes from her family and the way she was raised.

Featuring a strong and interesting cast of supporting characters, this complex read features four separate and distinct story lines that gradually interweave as readers are slowly filled in on Ava's often difficult past. A past that has driven many of her choices through her life. Choices that have created at least some of the increasingly dangerous situations she now finds herself in today.

Second place finisher at the 2012 Claymore Awards at Killer Nashville, The Splintered Paddle: An Ava Rome Mystery is one of those rare books that pulls you deep inside a world far from home right from the beginning. It isn't all sundrenched beaches, cool waters, and happy days in paradise. Ava, also seen in the very good novella The Rules, knows something about the dark undercurrents at work in the 50^th state in the union and is more than ready to protect the defenseless.

The Splintered Paddle

Mark Troy

http://marktroymysterywriter.com/

Five Star Publishing (division of Cengage)

http://www.cengage.com

June 18, 2014

ISBN# 978-1-4328-2859-2

Hardback

304 Pages

$25.95

ARC supplied by the author in exchange for my objective review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2014, 2019

Mark Troy and the Female Private Detective: Grace "Redsie" Culver (1934 -1937)

In recent weeks, Texas author Mark Troy has considered Carrie Cashin and Sarah Watson for his series on the Female Private Detective. This time around Grace "Redsie" Culver is his subject.

 Grace "Redsie" Culver (1934 -1937)

Sometimes secretary, sometimes operative, Grace Culver worked for "Big Tim" Noonan of the Noonan Detective Agency. Written by Roswell Brown, she appeared in twenty issues of The Shadow Magazine from 1934 to 1937.  She is young, single, and attractive. Her dominant features are her red hair and sherry-colored eyes, which the reader is frequently reminded of. She is known as "Red" or "Redsie" to Big Tim.

Grace is smart, competent, brave and independent, though perhaps shading into recklessness at times. In the first story we learn that gangsters killed her father, but they could not kill the "detective spirit" which was part of the Culver blood. Whatever "detective spirit" is, it gets Redsie into a lot of cases up to her neck, and at some point it gets a lot of guns pointed at her. Sometimes she waxes philosophically about it.

"Grace always had known that Death played tag with her profession. Her own father had gone out that way, fighting, with his boots on. She might have been content to follow him."

Content she's not. It's the thrill of the chase that motivates her to leave her newspaper job and join Big Tim's outfit.

"The tracking of malefactors, the swift action of cornering them and the thrill of  bringing them in for justice, were as much in her blood as is speed in that of a finely-bred race horse."

If the Culver blood drags her into trouble, it also drags Big Tim and her colleague Jerry Riker along with her. Sometimes one or both of them has to save her, but only after she's solved the case. At other times, Grace does the saving of Tim and Jerry.

The stories are more medium-boiled than hard-boiled. There is plenty of action and violence, but little of the cynicism one expects from a hard-boiled story.

Grace doesn't always carry a gun, but everybody else seems to. When she finds herself in a predicament, she has to resort to whatever weapons happen to be handy—paperweight, kitchen knife, pan of hot grease, even a lipstick tube. More than likely, however, she will get her hands on a gun as the action escalates, and she will use it effectively.

Red takes as good as she gets. She gets punched, kicked, knocked out and tied up when she is not getting shot at. She leaps onto speeding cars or drives them, herself, in wild chases.

Grace has a fondness for double chocolate sodas and for the landlady from whom she rents a room, Maggie Moody. Jerry Riker wishes for some fondness from her, but she seems oblivious to Jerry's advances. To his credit, he never gives up trying to get her out on a date.

"Jerry saw an opening and dove into it. They came few and far between with a fast -action girl like "Big Tim" Noonan's red-headed aider-and-abetter. But from long habit, young Riker kept on trying." Just when it seems she might give in, the phone rings with another case.

The stories are competently written and still hold up well in spite of the years. Roswell Brown was a pseudonym for Jean Francis Webb who contributed plenty of stories in a variety of genres. He wrote gothic romance novels under a woman's name. There is some speculation that Webb might be a woman, though the consensus seems to be that he was male.

The Grace Culver stories, as with most stories from that era, are hard to find. However, six of them have been compiled into an ebook, Fox Red, by D.E. Cunningham. It is available for purchase from the Barnes & Noble Nook Store (ISBN: 1588737130)

Mark Troy ©2015

Mark Troy is the author of The Splintered Paddle, The Rules, Pilikia Is My Business and Game Face.  His website is at http://marktroymysterywriter.com

Mark Troy and the Female Private Detective: Sarah Watson, 1935-1938

Please welcome back Mark Troy with his perspective on the female private detective. Two Wednesdays ago he detailed Carrie Cashin. This week his focus is on Sarah Watson.

Mark Troy and the Female Private Detective: Sarah Watson, 1935-1938

Among the sisterhood of female crime-fighters are many attractive, hardboiled Janes who have every man they encounter eating out of their hands. Sarah Watson is not one of them. She is middle-aged, frumpy, heavy and charmless. ". . . a large woman,  solid with the solidity of rock." Her clothes are "rusty black," her hair is gray and her bosom is "rigidly corseted." She wears old-fashioned headgear and square-toed shoes. With her craggy chin and incipient moustache, she is not a doll to make the cover of a magazine.

The creation of D. B. McCandless, Sarah Watson appeared in eleven stories in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1935 to 1938. She ran the Watson Detective Agency, ably assisted by a tall, thin red-head named Ben Todd, whom she calls "whipper snapper." The stories are more medium than hard boiled, but the narrative is fast-paced and highly readable.

Sarah carries a gat, as does just about everybody in these stories, and she's not afraid to pull it out of the pocket of her skirt. Neither is she intimidated by gorillas who wield them. When a man sticks a gun into her stomach, she says, "If you shoot there, feller, the bullet will flatten on solid whalebone." More than one gorilla bears the marks of her pistol whipping. Sarah admits that she would like to ". . . beat up a man proper, for once! I'd begin on the nose...The nose is a nice tender place to begin. Maybe I'd break it -- after a while."

Sarah is all determination. She won’t back down from anybody, whether it be the law, a banker, bureaucrats or gangsters, who stand in the way of her solving the case and getting the geetus, and, usually, someone’s goat. Those who do come up against her grudgingly admire her intelligence.

Sarah is amazingly agile for her size and age, able to climb over gates and leap off of trains easily. The stories strain credibility. Sarah is a lone vigilante in a world of bumbling police and incompetent district attorneys. When a known crime figure kidnaps and kills a young girl, only Sarah can bring him to justice by planting the ransom money on him--money which she herself obtained by breaking into the district attorney’s home and taking from his desk where it was conveniently left outside of a locked safe. In another story, she constructs a dummy out of Ben Todd’s clothes, along with a parachute, and tosses the bundle out the window of an airliner in a ruse to convince a crook that someone else has made off with his stolen loot.

In spite of the credibility gap, the stories are fun reads, chiefly due to the interplay between Sarah and the long-suffering Ben. Ben is brash and impetuous and needs to be restrained for his own and Sarah’s good. She locks him in closets or the back of her car, and even singes his hair with a warning shot. He calls her a she-devil and harridan when he’s angry with her, and “old girl” when he’s not. At the end of a case full of bickering, however, she is willing to share her lunch with him, which, of course, she brought from home.

Some of the Sarah Watson stories can be found through an internet search. Two of the best—“The Corpse in the Crystal” (1937) and “He Got What He Asked For” (1937)—are reprinted in Otto Penzler’s The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps (2007). Little is known about D. B. McCandless. It’s not even known if McCandless is a man or a woman. He or she is the author of over fifty stories appearing in such magazines as Detective Fiction Weekly, Gangster Stories, Speakeasy Stories, and others. He or she does not appear to have written any novel-length stories.

Mark Troy is the author of The Splintered Paddle, The Rules, Pilikia Is My Business, and Game Face. His website is http://marktroymysterywriter.com

Mark Troy and the Female Private Detective: Carrie Cashin (1937-1943)

Please welcome friend and author Mark Troy to the blog. On the 1^st and 3^rd Wednesday each month Mark will bring another perspective on mysteries here. Something that is good for all of us as the mystery field is a wide one with a rich and deep history. I am looking forward to these posts…

Carrie Cashin, 1937 - 1943

The early 1970's saw a big change in hard-boiled private eye fiction when women PIs entered the field.

Right?

Wrong!

Hard-boiled Janes have walked the mean streets nearly as long as hard boiled Dicks and have acquitted themselves just as well as their brothers.  So it comes as a surprise when a commentator such as John Semley, writing in the New York Times, "The Death Of The Private Eye" makes no mention of women except as femme fatales and minxes. In his view, "The hard-boiled gumshoes were men . . . "

So in upcoming posts we'll give the Janes their due. First up is Carrie Cashin.

Carrie Cashin was the creation of Theodore Tinsley, a prolific author of crime and western fiction. She appeared in forty-four stories from 1937 to 1943 in Crime Busters and Street and Smith's Mystery Magazine. Her appearance on the cover of Crime Busters was enough to spike sales of that issue and Street and Smith came very close to giving her a magazine of her own.

Carrie began as a department store detective, but then started her own agency, the Cash and Carry Agency. She ran it on the sound principle of payment up front, cash only. The agency's motto: "You pay, we deliver." Deliver, she does. She is so successful, she can charge a whopping fee of a thousand dollars for her services.

In the best hard-boiled tradition, Carrie does not let little things, like the law, get in the way of her mission. Breaking and entering, robbery and kidnapping are all part of her skill set. Carrie is not one to enter a door when a window will do. Her weapons are a small gun, which she carries in a thigh holster, and a purse with a secret compartment.

In her first story, "White Elephant," 1937, we find her on a ledge outside a 15th floor hotel room, ready to break in and recover (steal?) a stolen elephant amulet. Recover it she does, but returning to her own room she finds her client dead, killed with her nail file, and the police at the door. Out the window and over the roof she goes, down into the subway where she dodges a train and makes it back to her office.

Carrie's stories are breathless adventures. She rushes here and there, encountering bodies and leaving some herself. She's not all brawn and athleticism, however. She solves the crimes with her brains and wins hearts with her "softly rounded beauty."

Carrie is aided in her exploits by a good-looking, but somewhat dense, "He doesn't know a clue when he sees one," guy named Aleck "Handsome Aleck" Burton. Aleck fronts for the agency because Carrie believes most people are biased against female detectives. Shades of Remington Steele! When a client comes in, Carrie takes the role of a secretary, taking notes and asking the probing questions — for clarification, of course.  Don't expect Handsome Aleck to come to Carrie's rescue or get her out of jams. This is Carrie's show all the way.

She finds the clues, tackles the bad guys, and delivers justice on her own.

Carrie's stories are hard to find. When issues of Crime Busters pop up on eBay, they usually fetch $200 or more. Your best bet is to sample her exploits in Hard-boiled dames: Stories featuring women detectives, reporters, adventurers, and criminals from the pulp fiction magazines of the 1930s, edited by Bernard A. Drew, St. Martin's, 1986. It's worth a visit to your local library.

Mark Troy ©2015

Mark Troy is the author of The Splintered Paddle, The Rules, Pilikia Is My Business and Game Face.  His website is at http://marktroymysterywriter.com

Via WriteKnit-- Book Review: The Splintered Paddle – Heart Pounding Hawaiian Mystery

Book Review: The Splintered Paddle – Heart Pounding Hawaiian Mystery

Mark Troy's Giveaway

As the author posted elsewhere earlier today...

Two lucky readers will each win a hard cover copy of The Splintered Paddle at the Neverending Book Giveaway: http://www.thebigthrill.org/giveaway/. Just go to the site and answer the question about The Splintered Paddle. The winners will be drawn on November 22. If you are going to Bouchercon, you can win a copy at my author focus session, Friday, 1:30, Harbor C.

I hope everybody enters and good luck.

Mark Troy

The Splintered Paddle, an Ava Rome mystery, from Five Star Publishing

http://marktroymysterywriter.com

metroy@suddenlink.net

Mark Troy's THE SPLINTERED PADDLE

As Mark has posted elsewhere this evening....

The Splintered Paddle will be included in the issue of The National Examiner that hits the newsstands on Monday, October 6. The article will include a giveaway. So pick up the mag in the checkout line of your supermarket to find out how to get a hardcover copy of The Splintered Paddle.

Mark Troy
The Splintered Paddle, an Ava Rome mystery, from Five Star Publishing
http://marktroymysterywriter.com
metroy@mac.com

Senior News Newspaper Book Review Column--August 2014

For my monthly newspaper book review column in the Senior News Newspaper, I usually make sure to choose one fiction and one nonfiction book in the hopes of interesting more readers. This month I went with The Splintered Paddle by Texas resident Mark Troy (highly recommend this book and anything else has done) and When Your life Is Touched By Cancer: Practical Advice and Insights for Patients, Professionals and Those Who Care by Bob Riter. As anyone who has read the blog knows, cancer continues to dominate our lives over everything else. Longer reviews of both books are available here on the blog. Included below are the relevant book covers for my August 2014 column…  

The Splintered Paddle

Mark Troy

Five Star Publishing (division of Cengage)

ISBN# 978-1-4328-2859-2

Hardback

304 Pages

Private Investigator Ava Rome has no idea in the beginning that she is being hunted. She has no idea at all a man from her distant past is in the islands watching her every move. Fantasizing over and over again what he is going to do to her once he finally gets her alone. His name is Norman Traxler and he is coming for her--- after he eliminates whatever she cares about a chess piece at a time.

That situation is just a small part of what is going on in this complicated mystery featuring multiple story lines. Written by Texas author Mark Troy who spent a number of years in Hawaii before moving to Texas, this complex read features four separate and distinct story lines that gradually interweave as readers are slowly filled in on Ava's often difficult past.  A Second place winner at the 2012 Claymore Awards at Killer Nashville, The Splintered Paddle: An Ava Rome Mystery is one of those rare books that pulls you deep inside a world far from home right from the beginning. It isn't all sundrenched beaches, cool waters, and happy days in paradise. Ava, also seen in the very good novella The Rules, knows something about the dark undercurrents at work in the 50^th state in the union and is more than ready to protect the defenseless.

When Your life Is Touched By Cancer: Practical Advice and Insights for Patients, Professionals and Those Who Care

Bob Riter

Hunter House Publishing

ISBN# 978-0-89793-679-8

Paperback                    

145 Pages

Around here we know something about cancer and its impact. More than we ever wanted to know. So does Bob Riter, cancer survivor. He is also the executive director of Cancer Resource center of the Finger Lakes in Ithaca, New York. The nine chapters of this book are made up of various columns he wrote for the Ithaca Journal newspaper about his cancer as well as cancer in general. He wrote about, not only his experience, but the various cancer questions he has heard from patients or their loved ones over the years. The short chapters are designed to be read here and there as the mood or need strikes.

All I can say is When Your life Is Touched By Cancer: Practical Advice and Insights for Patients, Professionals and Those Who Care by Bob Riter is an incredible book. I hope and pray you will never need it, but if you ever do, it’s good to know it is out there and can help ease everything just a little bit.

Kevin R Tipple ©2014

Author of Mind Slices and contributor to the Carpathian Shadows, Volume II Anthology

Via Buried Under Books-- Chandler, Kamehameha, and the Mean Streets of Hawaii

I missed this guest post by author Mark Troy when it first came out a couple of weeks ago. If you missed it as well make sure you read "Chandler, Kamehameha, and the Mean Streets of Hawaii" here.

The Splintered Paddle: An Ava Rome Mystery is really good.  I highly recommend it. I reviewed it here.

Review: "The Splintered Paddle: An Ava Rome Mystery" by Mark Troy

Private Investigator Ava Rome has no idea in the beginning that she is being hunted. She has no idea at all a man from her distant past is in the islands watching her every move. Fantasizing over and over again what he is going to do to her once he finally gets her alone. His name is Norman Traxler and he is coming for her--- after he eliminates whatever she cares about a chess piece at a time.

Ava's latest client, sent by Moon Ito, is a young woman named Jenny Mordan. Battered an assaulted by a corrupt cop named Ron Nevez she wants and needs Ava's help. The fact that Jenny is a freelancer in the world's oldest profession is not a factor for Ava Rome. Jenny is defenseless and Ava's business is to protect the defenseless as it was under Kamehameha the Great before the annexation of the islands by the United States in 1898.  That first law of King Kamehameha, the law of the splintered paddle, is still ingrained in the islands and its people and serves as the very personal mandate of what Ava Rome does each and every day. The defenseless will be guaranteed from harm--period.  Using your badge as a weapon is considered official suppression and Ava's isn't about to put up with that.

That issue isn't the only thing she isn't about to put up with in this complicated mystery featuring multiple story lines. Written by Texas author Mark Troy who spent a number of years in Hawaii before moving to Texas, this new series features an intense take no prisoners heroine committed to solving mysteries from the past and present despite the many complications involved with both. Ethical and principled, willing to go it alone if and when she has to, Ava Rome always advances and never retreats. That might be something that comes from her family and the way she was raised.

Featuring a strong and interesting cast of supporting characters, this complex read features four separate and distinct story lines that gradually interweave as readers are slowly filled in on Ava's often difficult past. A past that has driven many of her choices through her life. Choices that have created at least some of the increasingly dangerous situations she now finds herself in today.

Second place finisher at the 2012 Claymore Awards at Killer Nashville, The Splintered Paddle: An Ava Rome Mystery is one of those rare books that pulls you deep inside a world far from home right from the beginning. It isn't all sundrenched beaches, cool waters, and happy days in paradise. Ava, also seen in the very good novella The Rules, knows something about the dark undercurrents at work in the 50^th state in the union and is more than ready to protect the defenseless.

The Splintered Paddle

Mark Troy

http://marktroymysterywriter.com/

Five Star Publishing (division of Cengage)

http://www.cengage.com

June 18, 2014

ISBN# 978-1-4328-2859-2

Hardback

304 Pages

$25.95

ARC supplied by the author in exchange for my objective review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2014

Via Mark Troy: Read an Excerpt from "The Splintered Paddle"

It is not Sunday, but then again, this is not here either so what the heck. Texas author and good guy Mark Troy who currently has offered the very good THE RULES for free at Amazon also has the first three chapters of his soon to be released book The Splintered Paddle online at his website http://marktroy.net/

The book also happens to be in my TBR via an ARC I got awhile back. Looks to be a good one.

So, go to Mark's site and and then surf over to the "Read An Excerpt From The Splintered Paddle." I didn't know this was up until tonight as he just mentioned it on one of the lists I am on. 

By the way, Mark is the guy who also wrote the very good Game Face and Pilikia Is My Business. If you have not read his work, get familiar as he is really good.

FREE BOOK ALERT--- THE RULES by Mark Troy

You may remember me mentioning this book before when it came up for free and I told you about it then. If not, Earl Staggs reviewed it here and Mark contributed a Sunday Sample here. The bottom line is THE RULES is a good one and ties into his novel The Splintered Paddle coming this summer. It is also FREE one more time.

As posted elsewhere earlier today....

Beginning tomorrow,  my short story, The Rules, will be free in the Kindle Store.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FGTBLW6.

Mark Troy

metroy@suddenlink.net

http://www.marktroy.net

The Rules, an Ava Rome mystery, now available in the Kindle Store

The Splintered Paddle, coming in June 2014

Good News-- Mark Troy Edition

Mark reports here on his blog that his story IFCH has been accepted for volume 2 of The Shamus Sampler. Volume One was very good. My review from last November is here if you are interested.

You can also read an interview with Mark at the Sons of Spade blog here where he talks about his new series featuring Ava Rome.

Mark Troy's Latest Giveaway

As posted elsewhere earlier this week....
 

Today I received the cover of The Splintered Paddle form Five Star. It's the first Honolulu Private Eye, Ava Rome novel, coming in June 2014. But you don't have to wait until June to read Ava's exploits. The Rules is a short story available now on Kindle. Now for the giveaway. You can view the cover of The Splintered Paddle on my website, http://www.marktroy.net. If you leave a comment about it, I will send you a Kindle edition of The Rules. It need not be a lengthy comment, just a word or two. Leave an address where I can email The Rules to you.

Mark Troy
http://www.marktroy.net
metroy@mac.com
The Rules, an Ava Rome mystery, now available in the Kindle Store
The Splintered Paddle, coming in June 2014

Mark Troy (author of "The Rules") Needs Your Help

Mark has been posting the below on various lists the last few days so I am posting his message here. If you contact him, please tell him I sent you. 

Signature drinks. The top sleuths have them. For Spenser, it's beer. For Travis McGee, it's Plymouth Gin. Ava Rome needs a drink of her own, so I'm offering a Kindle novella in exchange for a drink recommendation. Go to my website, http://www.marktroy.net and leave a drink in the comment box of the top entry. If it's a mixed drink, leave a recipe. If a brand name or label, tell me something about it. If you leave your email address or send it separately, I'll send you a Kindle edition of The Rules, the first Ava Rome mystery. Maybe Ava will like it, too.

Mark Troy

Http://marktroy.net

The Rules, an Ava Rome mystery now available on Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rules-ebook/dp/B00FGTBLW6/

The Splintered Paddle, coming in June 2014 from Five Star Publications