Lesa's Book Critiques: WINNERS AND A 1940S GIVEAWAY

 Lesa's Book Critiques: WINNERS AND A 1940S GIVEAWAY

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Blues Don’t Care by Paul D. Marks

The Blues Don’t Care (Down & Out Books, 2020) by Paul D. Marks is the first title in his new historical mystery series featuring Bobby Saxon. Set in Los Angeles during World War II, it is an absorbing glimpse of a time and place where Hollywood’s overriding presence pushed the ongoing international crisis to the back of daily consciousness. The sight of service members in uniform on leave or on their way to their next assignment, a gold star in a window, the headlines of the newspaper served as reminders but largely everyone is taken up with the entertainment industry and finding their place in it.

Bobby Saxon is no different. He loves big band music and considers a place in a band the most wonderful job anyone could have. He plays a mean piano and quite accidentally is offered a temporary spot in the premier black band of the time. He is in seventh heaven, even though being the only white member of a black band is not an enviable position in racially charged Los Angeles. His bubble of happiness explodes quickly, when a couple of suspected Nazis and known racists are killed at the club where the band is playing, and a member of the band is arrested. The police have no real reason to arrest the man, it’s just he’s black and there, and they can mark the case solved.

The leader of the band Booker Taylor tells Bobby he can have a permanent place with the band if he finds the real killer and Booker gets his sax man back. Bobby knows nothing about being a private investigator but jumps in at the deep end. He attends all of the private detective movie showings he can find to learn what his next steps should be. He meets the police detective in charge of the inquiry and researches the background of the victim. Along the way he meets the gangster Tony Leach who owns the club where the murder took place. Leach isn’t happy about being closed down due the police investigation and decides not to be offended by Bobby approaching him. Their interactions are entertaining. Bobby knows he’s sticking his head into an alligator’s mouth but he is convinced Leach knows something that could help him.

This story has a number of surprises in it and a complexity that is hard to convey in a brief review. It is redolent of the era and offers perceptive insights into race, gender and identity, all relevant to the present day. The mystery itself is well done with a clue here and a clue there as Bobby puts the pieces together. I know this book is supposed to be the first of a series although I don’t quite see how a sequel might be set up. However, Marks is clearly a creative guy so I will be happy to wait and see. In the meantime this atmospheric, well-crafted book is highly recommended.

·         File Size: 1688 KB

·         Print Length: 396 pages

·         Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited

·         Publisher: Down & Out Books (June 1, 2020)

·         Publication Date: June 1, 2020

·         Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC

·         Language: English

·         ASIN: B083H2T78G

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Lesa Holstine: The Blues Don't Care by Paul D. Marks

Lesa Holstine: The Blues Don't Care by Paul D. Marks

SleuthSayers Blog: Fleshing Out The Past by by Lawrence Maddox

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Guest Post: The Tipping Point by Paul D. Marks

When your son gets his Bachelors Degree in Criminology at UTD and then goes on to work on his graduate degree in the same subject at the University, you learn a lot about the “Broken Windows Theory” which is a major part of Criminology. That theory ultimately led to the concept of “Community Policing.” That theory also led to the new book by award winning author Paul D. Marks. Please welcome Paul to the blog today with his guest post.

The Tipping Point by Paul D. Marks

According to Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point—How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Broken Windows theory says:

In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti,

public disorder, and aggressive panhandling,

[James Q. Wilson and George Kelling write],

are all the equivalent of broken windows,

invitations to more serious crimes.

—Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping
   Point—How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

To that end, Private Eye Duke Rogers decides to help Marisol, an undocumented immigrant, whose brother has been murdered.

Duke says, “I believed in the ‘broken windows’ theory, which says that if you replace the broken windows in your neighborhood there will be less crime overall. The murder of Marisol’s brother Carlos was a broken window that needed fixing. And I decided right then: I would help Marisol…”

Broken Windows is the sequel to my Shamus Award-winning mystery-thriller White Heat. In White Heat Duke does something that inadvertently leads to the death of an innocent person. In that book, he tries to make amends for his actions. And in Broken Windows he’s still doing penance for unintentionally and indirectly causing that woman’s death. So maybe he’s a good guy who just wants to help Marisol out or maybe he’s doing it to try to fix his own “broken window”.

Like many of us, Duke is a mixed bag in terms of a person. He’s someone who wants to do good, but who sometimes can’t, and who sometimes does the wrong thing simply because it’s expedient. But he does have a conscience and wants to make good for his misdeeds. At the same time he has to contend with his sidekick and partner, Jack, who’s the epitome of unPC. And, while Duke and Jack don’t always see eye to eye, each knows the other has his back. In some ways, Jack is like the devil from the old cartoons on Duke’s shoulder, egging him into doing the wrong thing.

So, in Broken Windows, set in 1994 during the time of California’s notorious anti-illegal alien Proposition 187, Duke and a reluctant Jack are sucked into the case of Marisol’s murdered brother At the same time, a young woman climbs to the top of the Hollywood Sign and jumps to her death. A disbarred lawyer living in the not-so-good part of Venice Beach places an ad in a local weekly, “Will Do Anything for Money.” And somehow they’re all connected, but the somehow is what Duke and Jack have to figure out, while trying not to get killed themselves.

In the course of the case, Duke and Jack find themselves in the middle of the immigration quagmire, embroiled in the Prop 187 debate even to the point of finding themselves at Smuggler’s Gulch near San Diego, one of the main routes for people to sneak into the US. They find that things aren’t what they seem and through Marisol even Jack begins to see the ambiguities of the immigration debate.

And, though the story is set in 1994 and revolves around a real situation, that of the Prop 187 chaos, we might look at it as a precursor to what’s happening with the immigration debate today. And if we don’t find a way out of the immigration quicksand, we’ll find ourselves continuing to sink, until the muck is over our heads and our grandchildren are writing stories around the immigration issue of their time and saying to each other, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.

And thank you for hosting me, Kevin. I’ve enjoyed being here.

Paul D. Marks ©2018

Paul D. Marks is the author of the Shamus Award-winning mystery-thriller White Heat, which Publishers Weekly calls a “taut crime yarn,” and its sequel Broken Windows (dropping 9/10/18). Publisher’s Weekly says: “Fans of downbeat PI fiction will be satisfied…with Shamus Award winner Marks’s solid sequel to… White Heat.” Though thrillers and set in the 1990s, both novels deal with issues that are hot and relevant today: racism and immigration, respectively. Marks says “Broken Windows holds up a prism from which we can view the events burning up today’s headlines, like the passionate immigration debate, through the lens of the recent past. It all comes down to the saying we know so well, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.” His short stories appear in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines, among others, and have won or been nominated for many awards, including the Anthony, Derringer and Macavity. His story Windward, has been selected for the Best American Mystery Stories of 2018, edited by Louise Penny & Otto Penzler, and has also been nominated for both a 2018 Shamus Award and Macavity Award for Best Short Story. Ghosts of Bunker Hill was voted #1 in the 2016 Ellery Queen Readers Poll. He is co-editor of the multi-award nominated anthology Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea. www.PaulDMarks.com

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