FFB: The Case of The Hardboiled Dicks – John Blumenthal

I should have realized it from the title, but it didn’t take long for me to figure out this book wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. It grabs every private eye cliche and wrings it for every thing it can get out of it. Mac Slade is our erstwhile hero and every woman wants him. He wants every woman. When he brushes a woman off several times, he literally gives her a brush(clothes, hair, lint). 

The women are all beautiful and we get lines like “gams from the hips all the way to the ground” and “a blouse so tight that if breasts could breathe, they would have to come up for air shortly.” He has a gal Friday named Tuesday, he carries a gat, a heater, a roscoe.

He’s not very bright and has been known, when following a car, to lose it and pick up the wrong one later. He once followed a car from New York to Arizona before realizing his mistake.

He’s hired by a beautiful woman who calls herself Mary Smith to find her baby brother Link, in hiding from the mob for gambling debts. Slade quips “I specialize in finding missing links. Also, when he learns her real identity, he finds that her husband committed suicide by shooting himself in the back with a bow-and-arrow. “Not that weird, I did it to myself by accident,” he thinks.  

Bodies keep turning up with a bullet from Slade’s gun in them, but they’ve been dead for hours, boiled alive in water. The first is identified as Mike Hammer, Jr., the second as Philip Marlowe, Jr., and the cops are looking for Sam Spade, Jr., one wanting to pin it all on Slade.

A shadowy figure known as the “Fat Man” seems to be behind it all and Slade runs into a mob boss looking for the brother named Don Corleone.

An amusing little book and it put me in mind of Get Smart for it’s silliness. Don Adams would have been perfect in the role of Mac Slade.

For more forgotten books, drop in on Todd Mason who’s doing the gathering this week over at http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com

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FFB: Dead, Mr. Mozart – Bernard Bastable

Today is Robert Barnard day on Forgotten Books. I’ve not read any of his work before and decided to go with one under his pseudonym Bernard Bastable, one of a handful of historical thrillers  under that name.

It’s the story of aging Austrian composer Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart. The middle name threw for until I did some research and learned Mozart did indeed use that name at times. I would consider DEAD, MR. MOZART a novel set in an alternate universe.

It’s 1820 and the sixty-four year old Austrian lives in England, has since he was seven. He hasn’t composed anything of consequence in decades, merely simple trifles to amuse the populace and nobility. He’s poor and survives by doing such things as playing what we would call elevator music today for the royal family while they dine. He then gets to eat from the leftovers, better fare than he usually engages in. He also works at Mr. Poppins’ theater, the Queen, and has even adapted a Salieri opera to be more lighthearted for British audiences.

Now he has a chance to compose a new opera. King George III has died after a long illness, bouts with mental problems, and the coronation of George IV is in the planning stages. The new King wants to divorce his wife Caroline before that happens and Mozart gets caught up in palace intrigues when he’s forced to help hide a witness to Caroline’s infidelities  in the Queen and then dispose of a body when a murder happens.

Mozart sets out to find out what happened in that dressing room where he found a Lord, his patron, standing over the body.

For more book reviews on Robert Barnard and his work, Patti Abbott is doing the gathering on Friday.

Sinker – Rex Kusler

This sixth novel in the Las Vegas mystery series finds James “Jim” Snow  working alone. His partner at James and James Detective Agency, Alice James, is back east looking after her mother and considering a job offer tendered. Jim does check in with Alice and bounce ideas off her during his investigation.

A mother wants her daughter’s death investigated. It had been ruled an accidental drowning, the woman liked to fish at night on Lake Mead in the summer when it was so hot during the day. Her daughter’s pet Capuchin monkey was missing as well.

The monkey was an easy find and Jim is living in the dead woman’s triplex home until a sanctuary can be found to take the monkey. The woman’s identical twin sister lives in the other half of the building.

Doing what all private eyes do, Jim pokes around, asking questions, and putting the pieces together. Author Rex Kusler does a terrific job of keeping the story moving along as he builds toward the answer, dropping a twist or two in along the way.

A fine mystery available HERE.