In the introduction, Bill Pronzini talks about Robert Leslie Bellem and his career, a man reputed 3000 stories published in the pulps, the majority featuring his private eye Dan Turner. BLUE MURDER was the first of only a handful of novels and came out originally in 1938. This edition is a 1987 release.
The P.I. is Duke Pizzatello and he was only slightly less risque than Turner.
We get a plot where Duke is on the hook for a murder of a doctor and a woman found in his offices carved up so badly, face and fingertips, that she couldn’t be identified. The doctor’s wife, having hired Duke to get compromising evidence on him for divorce proceedings suddenly claims she doesn’t know him or had ever heard of him.
The plot is fast moving, the reader hardly has time to catch his breath, as Duke seems to get deeper into trouble with every move as he tries to clear his name.
Though I have a couple of Turner collections to read, I haven’t read a lot by Bellem and will need to get into those two I can see now.
A good one.
For more forgotten books, B. V. Lawson is handling the links today.