THE ARMCHAIR REVIEWER
Allen J. Hubin


JOHN WALTER PUTRE – Death Among the Angels. Scribner, hardcover, February 1991. No paperback edition.

   John Walter Putre brings back his private eye Doll in Death Among the Angels, a book with little to recommend: no people I’d care to meet again, a rather insubstantial plot insubstantially resolved, an unmemorable Florida setting, muddy motivations.

   An old girlfriend of Doll’s asks his help: she’s in jail, charged with the murder of her current boyfriend. She refuses to talk to her lawyer, says she was drunk during the critical night and doesn’t remember what happened, and in dare course also refuses to talk to Doll.

   What’s behind all this? Well, maybe an illegal salvage operation, into which — as is usual in these matters — it may be fatal for Doll to inquire.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier,
       Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 1991.


Bibliographic Note:   This is the second of only two works of detective fiction involving Doll, the first being A Small and Incidental Murder (Scribner, 1990).