Monday, July 06, 2026
Sunday, June 14, 2026
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Midnight Patriots: An Einstein-Chaplin Thriller by Paul Levine
Paul Levine
is a former trial lawyer and the author of two best-selling legal thriller
series that have won the John D. MacDonald Fiction Award and have been shortlisted
for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, Shamus, and James Thurber
prizes. He took an entirely different direction with his writing in 2025 with a
book set in the late 1930s about real-life friends Charlie Chaplin and Albert
Einstein who united their considerable forces to oppose the creeping fascism
threatening to overtake the world. Combining fact with well-considered fiction,
it was named Best Thriller of the Year from Best Thrillers.com.
The dynamic
if unlikely duo of Chaplin and Einstein is back in Midnight Patriots (Nittany
Valley Productions, June 2026). This time Charlie is in deep trouble. William
Randolph Hearst has put out a contract on Charlie because of his ongoing
dalliance with Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies. (The much older Hearst was
notoriously jealous of Chaplin and possessive of Davies. A Peter Bogdanovich
film called The Cat’s Meow (2001) uses it to explain the death of cinema
producer Thomas H. Ince. Wonderful movie.) In addition, a German sharpshooter
has been sent to assassinate Chaplin for his satirical portrayal of Hitler in
his new movie The Great Dictator. Chaplin made Hitler look a fool and
Hitler wasn’t standing for it.
Einstein
isn’t much better off. An aging German spy named Fritz Duquesne is determined
to show his bosses that he has not lost his touch. He plans to kidnap Einstein
and return him to the Nazi Germany Einstein fled years earlier. At the same
time, and fortunately for both Chaplin and Einstein, a pair of FBI agents is
watching Einstein at J. Edgar Hoover’s orders to obtain evidence of subversive
behavior. Major Leslie Groves is trying to enlist Einstein to monitor the
research into an atomic device underway at multiple universities.
While under
multiple threats, Chaplin tries to convert prospective presidential candidate Charles
Lindbergh from his isolationist views. Mobster Mickey Cohen acts as bodyguard
to Chaplin and Einstein. And Lena Horne gets her big career break when she
meets Cohen who offers her a performing contract at a popular nightclub of
which he is part owner.
Most of the
major players were real people. A summary at the end of the book explains which
is which and what happened to the nonfictional ones. Somehow the idea that
Einstein and Chaplin could be friends is startling but they were both well-known
world citizens and they held similar views. Likewise, Lindbergh’s status as an
aviation hero clouds public knowledge of his conservative politics and strong
belief in eugenics. It is easy to draw parallels between people and events in
the book, set in the late 1930s, and the present time.
Much of the
action takes place on the cross-country train known as the Super Chief, as
Einstein and Chaplin return to Los Angeles after a trip to New York and a stop
in Chicago on their way west. Insight into the workings of the long-gone
passenger railway is always fascinating. Readers who like mysteries set on
trains will want to read this book, as will those interested in the mindset of
the United States as it waffled on entering the war against Germany.
The parts
here about how the pro-war factions in the U.S. worked around the insular Congress
reminds me of one of my favorite books of 2024. The Wealth of Shadows by
Graham Moore (Random House, 2024), which was a fictionalized account of
real-life happenings during the early days of World War II, described how
President Roosevelt tasked the Treasury Department with finding a way to
undermine the German economy, intending to force a financial stop to the
fighting while staying officially within the isolationist policies in place.
A
fascinating piece of fictionalized history. Recommended!
·
ISBN-13: 979-8994263013
·
Publisher: Nittany Valley Productions,
Inc.
·
Publication date: June 16, 2026
·
Language: English
·
Print length: 390 pages
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4xr9ici
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal
It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Sunday, March 01, 2026
Saturday, February 14, 2026
Saturday, February 07, 2026
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Saturday, January 17, 2026
Saturday, January 03, 2026
Sunday, December 21, 2025
The Rap Sheet: Revue of Reviewers: 12-20-25
Note: In absolutely stunning news, I made the review roundup list TWICE today. First for my review hee on my blog of The Curious Poisoning of Jewel Barnes by Terry Shames. Second for my guest post review at Lesa's Book Critiques (Lesa Holstine) of Crimson Thaw by Bruce Robert Coffin. Very cool!
Thursday, December 18, 2025
In Reference to Murder: Mystery Melange
Friday, December 05, 2025
Barry Ergang's FFB Review: UNFAITHFUL SERVANT (2004) by Timothy Harris
From the archive….
I might as well say this right at the beginning: Unfaithful Servant is one of the best hardboiled detective novels I’ve read in a long time.
I discovered Timothy Harris’s work in the early 1980s when I stumbled upon a paperback edition of Good Night and Good-Bye. Cover copy hyped it as being “in the tradition of The Long Goodbye,” which automatically demanded that I read it because The Long Goodbye is my favorite novel. Read it I did, and found some similarities to Raymond Chandler’s masterwork, but was also pleased to see that, unlike too many other authors who tried unconvincingly to imitate Chandler, Harris chose to write in his own style, which is colorful and entertaining. As a result of loving the book, which I later acquired in hardback, I bought a copy of Kyd for Hire, Harris’s first novel about Southern California private investigator Thomas Kyd, which I recall thinking reminded in me ways of The Big Sleep, and which I also quite enjoyed.
Then I waited over thirty years for
another Thomas Kyd novel. Fortunately, Unfaithful Servant—which
description can refer to Kyd as well as to others in the story—was eminently
worth the wait.
When Kyd is approached by
fourteen-year-old Hugo Vine, who offers him a fifteen-thousand-dollar Rolex to
watch his parents, his refusal sets the boy raging insults and obscenities at
him. A few months later he encounters Hugo yet again. Their conversation is
brief because Kyd is on a case and hasn’t time for a lengthy chat.
Hugo is the son of Hollywood actress Sally Vine and her late producer husband Daniel Vine, as Kyd learns when he’s contacted by Sally’s lawyer and summoned to the Vine home, threatened with the charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. In attendance at the meeting are the lawyer, Hugo’s therapist, a deputy city attorney, and a Robbery-Homicide detective with an attitude. It isn’t until the meeting ends that Kyd meets Raj LaSalle, Sally’s current husband, and Sally herself. The actress transparently manipulates the reluctant Kyd into accepting the job of keeping an eye on Hugo, who may or may not be using or dealing drugs, to learn what he’s up to and to prevent him from getting into trouble.
Doing so results in a stormy
relationship with a determined, possibly disturbed, and ultimately endangered
Hugo because it isn’t long before Kyd learns that the boy is certain his
father’s death was not a skiing accident but a deliberate murder, and that he,
Hugo, is not only sure he knows who the killer is, but also knows someone who
claims to have witnessed the crime. As Kyd probes further, additional deaths
occur, at least one of which he’s accused of, and he has to contend with cops
who are honest but suspicious as well as others who are corrupt and
brutal; sycophants with delusions of cinematic grandeur and their monied idols;
tabloid “journalists;” a lawyer friend whose eye is always on the big,
constantly-remunerative score; and those who would harm a savvy but justifiably
depressed fourteen-year-old kid.
A successful screenwriter, Timothy
Harris knows his turf, vividly evoking the Hollywood film community and the
southern California landscape, external and internal. Building
steadily to an intense finish, this is an excellently-paced novel in which the
characters, major and minor alike, are three-dimensionally configured and
examined insightfully. Not the least of these is Kyd himself. Unlike the heroes
of most private eye series, about whom we’re told mostly superficial things and
shown only their quotidian routines, Kyd reveals significant moments about his
past, including boyhood and familial circumstances and events that shaped the
man he has become, that were the geneses of some of the demons he must contend
with now.
Unfaithful Servant was originally released in a
hardcover edition from Five Star Publishing, which sells mainly to libraries.
From what I’ve seen at Internet sites, booksellers are asking high prices for
it both in hardcover and advanced reading copy paperback editions. As far as
I’m aware, it has never been released in a trade or mass market paperback
edition. I read it in reasonably-priced Kindle edition from Endeavour Press,
which came out in 2014, but have not been able to find it in other electronic
formats.
As has become all too typical in both
physical and electronic books nowadays, this one has a few typos and some
incorrect punctuation. Fortunately they’re relatively few, and most readers
will find them ignorable. Two errors that stood out for me were venal,
in discussing sin, when venial was the intended word;
and Invisible Man model when the old Visible Man plastic
model is what Harris meant. The other errors are not likely to disrupt a
reader’s flow.
Unfaithful Servant is a must-read for fans of
hardboiled private eye novels—provided they aren’t squeamish about
street language and graphic violence. Although Harris doesn’t inundate the
reader with raunchy verbiage, he doesn’t shy away from it when it serves to
delineate someone’s manner of expressing himself and his feelings. Some of the
violence is very explicit, especially that in a climactic moment in which a
character gets his comeuppance. I found it satisfying; others may find it
gross.
Timothy Harris, in my estimation, is a top-tier writer who merits the same kind of accolades and esteem accorded to masters of the genre Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Lawrence Block, among others. I highly recommend the title under consideration here and its two predecessors, which I should reread one of these days. The big question is whether there will be another Thomas Kyd novel—and when. I hope the answers are Yes and Soon because I probably don’t have another thirty years ahead of me.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/44aEnE7
Barry Ergang ©2015, 2019, 2025
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/ and he can be reached there for your editorial needs.
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