Jerry's House of Everything: FORGOTTEN BOOK: KILLERS ARE MY MEAT

Jerry's House of Everything: FORGOTTEN BOOK: KILLERS ARE MY MEAT:   Killers Are My Meat by Stephen Marlowe  (1957) Marlowe's Chester Drum was a Washington, D.C.-based private eye who blazed his way thro...

FFB Review: Drum Beat-Madrid by Stephen Marlowe

For this final Friday in February 2020, it seemed like a good time to blow the dust off of this review which first ran back in 2014. After you read his review of  Drum Beat-Madrid by Stephen Marlowe. Make sure to head over to Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom Blog where he will have the roundup of the FFB reviews for this week posted as soon as possible. 

DRUM BEAT--MADRID (1966) by Stephen Marlowe

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

His primary office is in Washington, D.C., but private detective Chester Drum has also opened one in Geneva, Switzerland because his cases so frequently take him out of the United States. One of his most prominent clients, and a recurrent character in several books in this series, is Axel Spade. As Drum explains, “Axel Spade gives professional advice to black marketeers and smugglers. His going rates for an interview are a hundred bucks a half hour, and if you need the kind of advice Spade gives, a half hour of his time is the best investment you can make.” Spade has homes in New York City and Geneva, but must be careful about traveling elsewhere. He’s wanted in more than twenty countries.

When Drum Beat--Madrid opens, Spade and Drum are driving to Navarre, Spain, specifically to the ranch of Captain General Don Santiago Sotomayor, retired commander of the Guardia Civil. The purpose of the trip? Spade is going to marry Sotomayor’s niece, Luz Robles. Drum is to be his best man and, because he has a fair number of enemies, his bodyguard.

The Sotomayor family, the reader soon learns, is as dysfunctional as any outside of a Ross Macdonald novel. Don Santiago’s brother Hernando was a Loyalist during the Spanish Civil War. Don Santiago turned him in, and Hernando was executed. His son José was raised by Don Santiago. His wife and daughter went to Caracas, Venezuela. The wife died there, and Luz was raised by the Robles family. Son Ramón was adopted and raised in Baltimore, Maryland by Hernando’s closest friend. He’s now in the American Army, stationed in Spain, and calls himself Ray Moyers. He clearly has more than a platonic interest in his sister.

The schedule calls for José, who hasn’t seen his sister since they were children, to fly Luz from Madrid to Don Santiago’s ranch. When he lands and Luz is not with him, he explains: “We met in Madrid in the Ritz bar at noon. She had some shopping to do, she said. We were to meet later at the airport. I waited. She did not come. Still I waited. And then, at last, she sent a note saying she was afraid to fly with her señorito of a brother and had decided to take the train to Pamplona instead.”

A ransom note arrives at the ranch the next morning demanding fifty thousand dollars for Luz‘s return, leaving Drum and Spade to wonder why the ransom amount is so low, since Don Santiago can afford a great deal more. Drum spent two years with the FBI before going private, and has more experience handling kidnappings than the Guardia Civil. But Spade is initially unable to persuade Don Santiago to keep the two of them in the loop, let alone to permit Drum to investigate. It’s only after the kidnappers fail to appear at the designated ransom site they send Don Santiago to that the old man grudgingly agrees to let Drum take over. Take over he does, heading immediately to Madrid to try to retrace Luz’s steps and get a line on her current whereabouts--and those of her kidnappers. In doing so he encounters his share of colorful and well-delineated characters; surprises and revelations, not the least of which is the secret of the Sotomayor family treasure; some moral and ethical issues; and plenty of action, especially in Pamplona during the running of the bulls.   

According to Marlowe’s obituaries in The New York Times and The Boston Globe, he was well-traveled and lived in France, Spain and Switzerland. To anyone who has read any of the Chester Drum novels, this will come as no surprise: Marlowe’s sense of place and its culture was always meticulously and vividly rendered. Drum Beat--Madrid is no exception.

Barry Ergang ©2014, 2020

Among other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang's own impossible crime novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, is available at Amazon and Smashwords as is his recently released book of poetry, Farrago, and other entertaining reads. For more on Barry’s books as well as his editing services, check out Barry’s website.  

FFB Review: Drum Beat-Marianne by Stephen Marlowe--Review by Barry Ergang

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books. Barry Ergang is back this week with a new review as he reviews Drum Beat-Marianne. Stephen Marlowe is a favorite for Barry as his debut for FFB here back in March of 2011 was his review of Killers Are My Meat by Stephen Marlowe which ran again last year. In the years since Barry has reviewed Drum Beat- Dominique, Drum Beat-Madrid, Terror Is My Trade as well as Double In Trouble  by Stephen Marlowe and Richard S. Prather. Make sure to head over to Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom blog for the rest of the FFB suggestions for today and lots of other good stuff.

DRUM BEAT—MARIANNE (1968) by Stephen Marlowe

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Private investigator Chester Drum works out of both Washington, D.C. and—because his cases often take him abroad—Geneva, Switzerland. When this particular adventure opens, he’s in New York on a Friday for the funeral of his friend Axel Spade, who was notorious for his black market and other shady activities, and a wanted man in a number of countries because of them. Shortly after the ceremonies end, Drum is told by Spade’s New York lawyer that Spade has left a letter for him, and that he can pick up it on Monday morning. The idea is enormously appealing to Drum because it means he can spend time over the weekend with Marianne Baker.

Marianne is a feature writer for View magazine, the widow of Wally Baker, who was Drum’s closest friend, and the mother of twin boys. Drum is their godfather. Two years or so after Wally’s violent death—a death for which Drum was the intended victim—“without either one of us quite realizing it, the sympathy I’d felt for Marianne turned into something else. We drifted into an affair that lasted a season or two, and if I was anybody but the sort of continent-hopping private eye who lives violently on borrowed time, it might have ended in marriage. I went away…but deep in the back of my mind there lurked the idea of Marianne and the possibility of going off into the sunset with her. I think I was always in love with her or ready to fall back in love with her, even if we didn’t see each other for as much as a year at a time.”

But during an otherwise pleasant evening on the town, Marianne tells Drum she’s not going to rekindle their romance because she won’t risk widowhood again with someone like him who leads a violent life. At shortly after 3 a.m. the following morning, a somewhat inebriated Drum receives a phone call from a man telling him to be ready to be picked up at his hotel or Marianne Baker will die. Drum cooperates, of course, and meets Colonel Katukov of the KGB, who insists that Axel Spade is not dead and that Drum must find him if he values Marianne Baker’s life. She’ll be taken by ship to Yugoslavia. 

And so Drum is thrust into a situation involving murders, a billion dollars in Spanish gold, competing factions within the Kremlin, Yugoslavian secret police, a couple of attractive—and willing—women, and Ivo Jovanović, an eighty-year-old survivor of political imprisonment and the hope or bane of Yugoslavia, depending on a crucial decision he alone can make. Oh yes, there’s also the potential for nuclear war….

Drum Beat—Marianne takes off at a sprint and maintains a relatively steady pace throughout. Consistent with the author’s Chester Drum series is a strong sense of place, but not one too descriptive as to bog down narrative flow. Though hardly dealt with in great depth, a quality not expected or required in a short novel from this genre, characters are distinguishably well-rendered. All in all, another solid entry in a series that’s deservedly become a classic among fans of paperback original detective tales.

© 2017 Barry Ergang

Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work can be found at Smashwords and Amazon.

FFB Review: "KILLERS ARE MY MEAT" by Stephen Marlowe (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books. Barry Ergang made his debut for FFB here back in March of 2011 with his review below of Killers Are My Meat by Stephen Marlowe. In the years since Barry has reviewed Drum Beat- Dominique, Terror Is My Trade as well as Double In Trouble  by Stephen Marlowe and Richard S. Prather. Make sure to head over to Patti’s blog for the FFB suggestions today and lots of other good stuff.

KILLERS ARE MY MEAT (1957) by Stephen Marlowe

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

One of the more literate of the hardboiled writers to emerge during the Fifties, the prolific but undervalued Stephen Marlowe created Washington, D.C.-based private detective Chester Drum, most of whose cases take him out of the country. 

Killers Are My Meat starts when Drum is asked by the wife of his mentor, a P.I. named Gil Sprayregan, to find her husband. Drum soon learns Sprayregan has plans to blackmail Sumitra Mojindar, the round-heeled wife of a highly placed East Indian official, not realizing that everyone in D.C. knows of her promiscuity and that she herself doesn't care who knows it. Sprayregan is killed in a deliberate hit-and-run, and soon after his wife is shot to death by a smoothly vicious associate of Mrs. Mojindar who cannot be prosecuted because of his diplomatic immunity.

During the course of these events, Priscilla Varley tries to hire Drum to accompany her husband Stewart to Benares, India, where Varley will attend as a Western Observer an Afro-Asian Conference at which Mrs. Mojindar's husband is to be a key speaker. Varley is a man looking "to find himself" in the exotic, "mystical" East. Initially Drum declines the job, but after the Sprayregans are murdered, he agrees.

The plot develops further in Benares when Varley seeks out a sadhu, a holy man, and then goes missing; and Drum encounters an old friend and former lover, reporter Marianne Wilder, who is covering the conference. When Marianne is kidnapped by the same people who want Drum to deliver Varley to them, the action picks up and seldom flags. As things progress, Drum learns what Mrs. Mojindar and company feared Sprayregan had on them, and has to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion without causing an international incident--if he can survive the beatings he sustains along the way.

Imagine Philip Marlowe gone international and you have a sense of Chet Drum--though Drum's a lot more physical, less inclined to wisecracks, and a touch less cynical.

Born Milton Lesser (he legally changed his name), Stephen Marlowe writes in a crisp, literate style that shows definite flashes of Raymond Chandler, including the occasional Chandleresque simile. He has a good sense of character and an excellent sense of place and pace. If you enjoy quick, exciting reads, you owe it to yourself to seek out the Chester Drum novels by an author who was popular in his day but who, regrettably, is all but unknown nowadays except by collectors and nostalgia buffs.

More on the author can be found at: http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/Killers-Are-My-Meat

Barry Ergang © 2011, 2016

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is available at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/.

FFB Review: "TERROR IS MY TRADE" (1958) by Stephen Marlowe (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

Another Friday and Barry Ergang is back with another review for Friday’s Forgotten Books hosted by Patti Abbott. This week he reviews Terror Is My Trade by Stephen Marlowe. The work of Stephen Marlowe is a frequent topic of Barry’s reviews. Among others here on the blog, Barry has reviewed Killers Are My Meat and Drum Beat-Dominique.

TERROR IS MY TRADE (1958) by Stephen Marlowe

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

D.C.-based private detective Chester Drum has been hired by former Congressman Wade Rumbough as the latter’s bodyguard on a trip to Europe on the luxury liner Queen Victoria. Rumbough, who is the head of the Emergency Mission to the NATO Powers, has with him his daughter Helen, his brother Rufus, and Dr. Eve McGivern, who is aboard ostensibly as a companion for Helen. 

Also on board are Gino Garda, a racketeer who has been deported from the United States, whose career goes back to the days of Prohibition and Al Capone, and his friend Frank Caretti. Rumbough knew Garda years earlier as “a friend of a friend.” Garda is famous for flying wherever he has to go, so Drum wonders if his decision to sail back to Europe has anything to do with Rumbough and the diplomatic project he’s undertaken.

It’s finally decided that Drum’s role as bodyguard could be politically damaging to the nature of Rumbough’s mission, so the latter says he’ll pay Drum for his time and for his passage home from England once they dock. But while still aboard the Queen Victoria, Drum meets a State Department official named Paul Bible. After a drink and a conversation, they go their separate ways. But that night, while the ship is hosting a fancy dress ball, Drum has a brutal confrontation with Frank Caretti in Gino Garda’s stateroom. Later he finds a note from Bible that has been slipped under his own stateroom door: “I must see you tonight. I have to see you. I’ll be looking for you every fifteen minutes on the starboard boat deck starting at nine.” 

After some delay, Drum keeps the appointment—just in time to witness Bible’s murder at the hands of someone dressed in the costume of a Buckingham Palace Guard, but unable to identify, let alone capture, him or her. The one certainty? He knows he won’t be returning to the States anytime soon; he’s determined to find out which of the ship’s passengers killed Bible and threw him and the murder weapon overboard.

But this is the bare beginning of a very short (159 pages in the original Fawcett paperback edition), fast-paced, action-packed and intricately-plotted novel. Intricate to the point of occasionally being confusing because of its brevity, I might add, as Drum—a refreshingly fallible P.I., as he admits throughout—goes to work for Gino Garda with official approval, digs into and uncovers murky Rumbough family secrets, and penetrates the Insurance, the mysterious organization that serves as the protector for international smugglers of Swiss watch parts, diamonds, and drugs.

A well-written novel of its type, as this reader has come to expect from this author since said reader first discovered said author when the former was a teen, it’s one that some might take the time to parse about plot complications and others will just cruise along for an entertaining ride. Neither is likely to be disappointed. But I recommend the latter’s approach.

© 2015 Barry Ergang

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is available at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/.

FFB REVIEW: DRUM BEAT—DOMINIQUE (1965) by Stephen Marlowe ---Reviewed by Barry Ergang

DRUM BEAT—DOMINIQUE (1965) by Stephen Marlowe

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Although his primary office is in Washington, D.C., private detective Chester Drum has opened another one in Geneva, Switzerland because so many of his cases take him to Europe. When Drum Beat—Dominique opens, he's come to Paris at the request of his old friend and former colleague in the F.B.I., Jack Morley. Morley, whom Drum remembered as always immaculately dressed and who, after leaving the Bureau, once had a high-level position with the State Department, is now an unkempt drunk. He presently works for the Army, specifically the Graves Registration division of the Office of the Adjutant General.

"You see," he explains, "the Army never shut its books on men missing in action during World War Two, even though it's been almost twenty years since old Adolf blew his brains out. Well, most of the MIA's have been accounted for to the satisfaction of the Department of the Army and the next-of-kins, and the whole mess of field investigators has been reduced to a team of three custodial ghouls who poke around Europe tracking down dead men and, as I said, I'm one of the ghouls."

He has summoned Drum to Paris to ask for help he can't afford to pay for. Senator Clay Bundy thinks Morley is blackmailing him. When Drum asks about what, Morley refuses to say, but it becomes clear that he has discovered something about Bundy that makes the man vulnerable to blackmail and, unless he's lying and guilty as charged, that someone else knows what Morley knows and is using his name to bleed the senator. From Morley's companion Jill Williams, Drum learns that a mysterious caller warned Morley he'll be killed if he doesn't cease trying to extort money from the senator. In spite of Morley's irritating unwillingness to provide relevant information, Drum agrees to talk to Bundy on his behalf—but as his friend, not as his employee.

The arrogant and imperious senator has been in Paris for a couple of weeks to attend a conference, and Drum finagles a meeting with him. Though Bundy is skeptical of Drum's assertion that Morley isn't a blackmailer, he knows from a fellow senator that Drum has a stellar reputation in Washington and agrees to hire him to find and stop whoever the blackmailer is. He won't reveal why he's being blackmailed, but he tells Drum he's already made two payments of ten thousand dollars each to a man named Père Massicot, who owns a stall in the Paris Flea Market.

Drum has barely begun his investigation when a key figure is murdered and he first encounters the lovely Dominique Guilbert, for whom he falls hard and who also accuses Morley of being a blackmailer; and tangles with her hotheaded, antagonistic brother, Gaston. Still another murder occurs, and Drum's pursuit of answers takes him to the village of Col de Larche in the French Alps. The only hotel in the village is owned by Dominique's parents, Nicole and Raoul, both of whose faces are marked with small white scars from the plastic surgery necessary to repair damage sustained from wounds incurred during World War II (Raoul fought with the Maquis, the French Resistance). Madame Guilbert also wears long white gloves to cover her arms.

As his investigation progresses, Drum must contend with a "beezniz girl" named Gina; an American named Amos Kidder, who claims to be the vacationing owner of a hardware store in Massachusetts; Rosales, who runs an illicit gambling operation that extends credit to clients and who resorts to extreme methods of collection when and if he must; and Dr. Charles Auber, whose relationship to Nicole Guilbert might be more than professional.     

To find the answers and the identity of the murderer he seeks in a case that quickly becomes personal, Drum must uncover the truth about a twenty-year-old wartime event in Col de Larche.     

I haven't read any of Stephen Marlowe's many novels and stories outside of the Chester Drum series, so I can't speak to those or the work he published under his birth name of Milton Lesser before he changed it legally to Stephen Marlowe, or to the novels published under the several pseudonyms he used. I can, however, assert that the Drum novels consistently deliver smartly-crafted, vividly-written stories with an excellent sense of place. When I started Drum Beat—Dominique, I was unsure of whether I'd read it previously. If I had, it would have been when it was first published or a few years after, which means I'd have been eighteen or in my early twenties. It wasn't until I reached a climactic scene that I was certain that this time around was a rereading. I'd call it a testament to Marlowe's skill that I remember that scene four decades or so later. 

Barry Ergang © 2012

Formerly the Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and First Senior Editor of Mysterical-E, winner of the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award for the best flash fiction story of 2006, his written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. For links to material available online, and fiction available for e-readers, see Barry’s webpages. Remember, too, that he has books from his personal collection for sale at http://barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/ He'll contribute 20% of the purchase price of the books to our fund, so please have a look at his lists.

Friday's Forgotten Books: "Killers Are My Meat" by Stephen Marlowe (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

It is Friday and that means it is time for another Friday’s Forgotten Books Review. It also seemed like a good time to do something different. For the last several years, my friend Barry Ergang has been contributing the occasional review to this blog. One of the things I like about Barry’s well done reviews is the fact that he reviews books I normally would not do. It seemed like a good time to share the Friday workload with him as well as give you, the reader, a different perspective than what you see most days here. Therefore, Barry makes his Friday debut with Killers Are My Meat by Stephen Marlowe.

KILLERS ARE MY MEAT (1957) by Stephen Marlowe

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

One of the more literate of the hardboiled writers to emerge during the Fifties, the prolific but undervalued Stephen Marlowe created Washington, D.C.-based private detective Chester Drum, most of whose cases take him out of the country. 

 

 Killers Are My Meat starts when Drum is asked by the wife of his mentor, a P.I. named Gil Sprayregan, to find her husband. Drum soon learns Sprayregan has plans to blackmail Sumitra Mojindar, the round-heeled wife of a highly placed East Indian official, not realizing that everyone in D.C. knows of her promiscuity and that she herself doesn't care who knows it. Sprayregan is killed in a deliberate hit-and-run, and soon after his wife is shot to death by a smoothly vicious associate of Mrs. Mojindar who cannot be prosecuted because of his diplomatic immunity.

During the course of these events, Priscilla Varley tries to hire Drum to accompany her husband Stewart to Benares, India, where Varley will attend as a Western Observer an Afro-Asian Conference at which Mrs. Mojindar's husband is to be a key speaker. Varley is a man looking "to find himself" in the exotic, "mystical" East. Initially Drum declines the job, but after the Sprayregans are murdered, he agrees.

The plot develops further in Benares when Varley seeks out a sadhu, a holy man, and then goes missing; and Drum encounters an old friend and former lover, reporter Marianne Wilder, who is covering the conference. When Marianne is kidnapped by the same people who want Drum to deliver Varley to them, the action picks up and seldom flags. As things progress, Drum learns what Mrs. Mojindar and company feared Sprayregan had on them, and has to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion without causing an international incident--if he can survive the beatings he sustains along the way.

Imagine Philip Marlowe gone international and you have a sense of Chet Drum--though Drum's a lot more physical, less inclined to wisecracks, and a touch less cynical.

Born Milton Lesser (he legally changed his name), Stephen Marlowe writes in a crisp, literate style that shows definite flashes of Raymond Chandler, including the occasional Chandleresque simile. He has a good sense of character and an excellent sense of place and pace. If you enjoy quick, exciting reads, you owe it to yourself to seek out the Chester Drum novels by an author who was popular in his day but who, regrettably, is all but unknown nowadays except by collectors and nostalgia buffs.

More on the author can be found at: http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/Killers-Are-My-Meat

Barry Ergang © 2011

To celebrate e-book week, Barry Ergang's impossible crime novelette, "The Play of Light and Shadow," has been reduced in price at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/24377 Download a copy to your e-reader or computer between now and March 12th. If you like whodunits/howdunits, try to solve this one.

Barry’s other offerings at Smashwords can be found at: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cassidy20

Barry's Reviews: "Killers Are My Meat" by Stephen Marlowe

KILLERS ARE MY MEAT (1957) by Stephen Marlowe

reviewed by Barry Ergang

One of the more literate of the hardboiled writers to emerge during the Fifties, the prolific but undervalued Stephen Marlowe created Washington, D.C.-based private detective Chester Drum, most of whose cases take him out of the country.

Killers Are My Meat starts when Drum is asked by the wife of his mentor, a P.I. named Gil Sprayregan, to find her husband. Drum soon learns Sprayregan has plans to blackmail Sumitra Mojindar, the round-heeled wife of a highly placed East Indian official, not realizing that everyone in D.C. knows of her promiscuity and that she herself doesn't care who knows it. Sprayregan is killed in a deliberate hit-and-run, and soon after his wife is shot to death by a smoothly vicious associate of Mrs. Mojindar who cannot be prosecuted because of his diplomatic immunity.

During the course of these events, Priscilla Varley tries to hire Drum to accompany her husband Stewart to Benares, India, where Varley will attend as a Western Observer an Afro-Asian Conference at which Mrs. Mojindar's husband is to be a key speaker. Varley is a man looking "to find himself" in the exotic, "mystical" East. Initially Drum declines the job, but after the Sprayregans are murdered, he agrees.

The plot develops further in Benares when Varley seeks out a sadhu, a holy man, and then goes missing; and Drum encounters an old friend and former lover, reporter Marianne Wilder, who is covering the conference. When Marianne is kidnapped by the same people who want Drum to deliver Varley to them, the action picks up and seldom flags. As things progress, Drum learns what Mrs. Mojindar and company feared Sprayregan had on them, and has to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion without causing an international incident--if he can survive the beatings he sustains along the way.

Imagine Philip Marlowe gone international and you have a sense of Chet Drum--though Drum's a lot more physical, less inclined to wisecracks, and a touch less cynical.

Born Milton Lesser (he legally changed his name), Stephen Marlowe writes in a crisp, literate style that shows definite flashes of Raymond Chandler, including the occasional Chandleresque simile. He has a good sense of character and an excellent sense of place and pace. If you enjoy quick, exciting reads, you owe it to yourself to seek out the Chester Drum novels by an author who was popular in his day but who, regrettably, is all but unknown nowadays except by collectors and nostalgia buffs.

For more on this book as well as the Golden Age of Detection follow the link at:
http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/Killers-Are-My-Meat


Barry Ergang © 2008

2007 Derringer Winner Barry Ergang is Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and First Senior Editor for Mysterical-E. You can find information about and links to his work Barry’s webpages.

Barry's Reviews---"Double In Trouble"

DOUBLE IN TROUBLE (Fawcett, 1959) by Richard S. Prather & Stephen Marlowe

reviewed by Barry Ergang

Richard S. Prather's Shell Scott and Stephen Marlowe's Chester Drum were two of the most popular private detectives in Fawcett's Gold Medal line of paperback originals. The writers had an agent in common who suggested that his clients team up their sleuths, and so Double in Trouble was born. (For additional information, see the reminiscence by Stephen Marlowe at Ed Gorman's blog.)

The story begins with Scott in Los Angeles, hired by Alexis Frost to find her missing father. Gideon Frost is scheduled to testify in Washington before the Senate committee chaired by Senator Blair Hartsell, a committee which has been investigating corruption in labor-management relations and which has recently targeted the very corrupt National Brotherhood of Truckers union. Shortly thereafter, one of Scott's best friends and a dues-paying member of the union is murdered.

Later that same day, in Washington, D.C., Drum thwarts the attempted kidnapping of a woman who won't tell him her name. The incident eventually thrusts him into the investigation of the National Brotherhood of Truckers, too—as a special operative for the Hartsell Committee.

Each detective, working his side of the country, learns that the other is involved. Each knows of the other by reputation. But as events unfold, each begins to suspect the other of being in league with the enemy. At the same time Scott's investigation takes him to Washington, Drum's takes him to L.A. Eventually, of course, they meet face to face—or collide, as the book's cover blurb accurately terms it—when their separate but intimately related cases converge for some surprise revelations and the (literal) sock finish.

I first read Double in Trouble when I was in my teens, which means more than forty years ago. I had read nearly all of the Shell Scott novels and short story collections that had by then been published (and continued to read them as new ones appeared), and quite a few of the Chester Drum novels (and have read quite a few more, purchased on e-Bay, in recent adulthood). Liking both in different ways, when I acquired a copy of Double in Trouble, I was filled with what Shell Scott describes in it as a "joyously anticipatory emotion." After I read it, I felt as Scott subsequently did: "My joyously anticipatory emotion was all shot to hell."

Rereading it after all these years, I have a better idea why. Marlowe was a better "pure" writer than Prather, with a stronger sense of character and place. Though his cases were vastly different, usually taking him out of the country, Chester Drum's style and manner were clearly influenced by Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. (I've long wondered if Drum's creator, who was born Milton Lesser and who legally changed his name to Stephen Marlowe, did so specifically because of Chandler's influence.) At the opposite extreme, Prather was a master of comical circumstance and prose style. Shell Scott could be as hardboiled as Mike Hammer—but with a wacky sense of humor and a lighthearted lecherousness that would appeal to most male readers, regardless of how "liberated" they were. Scott's most entertaining cases put him in outlandish situations—see, for example, Strip for Murder and Dance With the Dead.

It's this clash of styles and approaches that weakens Double in Trouble, that militates against Prather more than Marlowe because the storyline doesn't permit the kind of zaniness the reader expects and wants from Prather.

Additionally, because the book alternates chapters told by each detective, it's hard to keep track of the details of the case, who's trying to do what to whom. In spite of this, it's readable and loaded with enough action to fill a year's worth of pulp magazines, so eventually you quit worrying about the details and just rocket along for the ride.

For more on this novel and others created during the Golden Age of Detection follow the link to http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/ where you can search by author and/or title.



Barry Ergang © 2007

Currently the Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and First Senior Editor of Mysterical-E, winner of the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s 2007Derringer Award in the Flash Fiction category, Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. For links to material available online, see Barry’s webpages.