KEN PETTUS – Say Goodbye to April. Knightsbridge, paperback original; 1st printing, 1991.

   Knightsbridge was a short-lived company that published a wide variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, including ones by Ralph Nader and Vince Bugliosi, not to mention 24 first edition mysteries listed in Crime Fiction IV, all between 1990 and 91. I’ve always suspected there was a connection between Knightsbridge and Kensington, an imprint from Zebra (or is it the other way around?) that is still going strong today, but a quick search on Google came up dry, so perhaps not.

   This connection was suggested, by the way, by the fact that the first mystery written by [the late] Jim McCahery, a friend of mine through DAPA-Em (I’ll explain some other time), was published by Knightsbridge (Grave Undertaking) and the second by Kensington (What Evil Lurks). The detective of record in both books was Lavina London, an elderly retired Old Time Radio actress.

   Knightsbridge also reprinted several books in Bill Pronzini’s “Nameless” PI series, most (or all?) in two-in-one packaging. Ones I know about are Dragonfire/Casefile, Hoodwink/Scattershot, and Labyrinth/Bones. They’re all scarce in these Knightsbridge editions: only seven combined copies of the three books are available at the moment [when this review was written] on ABE.     [FOOTNOTE.]

   Say Goodbye to April is almost, but not quite, as difficult to come by. There are 12 copies now on ABE, and believe it or not, four of them can be purchased for a dollar each. If you’re one of the first ones to read this, you can get one cheap, in other words, but if you’re not quick off the mark, I’ll be willing to wager that a number of Mystery*File’s readership will have gotten there ahead of you, this book not being widely known before now as a private eye story.

   Which it is, and yes, I’m finally getting there. Ken Pettus had a long career before writing this, apparently his first and only book in print, as a high honcho in the world of television mystery and action-adventure drama, his credits including stints as scriptwriter for (I’ll start with the earliest ones first) Bonanza, Combat!, The Gallant Men, Branded, The Big Valley, The Wild Wild West, The Green Hornet, Mission: Impossible, The High Chaparral, Hawaii Five-O, Cannon, Jigsaw, Battlestar Galactica, Magnum P.I., and Shannon. It’s quite a resume, and there’s not one of these shows I wouldn’t mind having boxed DVD sets for. (Some more than others.)

   Pettus’s last TV credit appears to have been in 1985. Goodbye to April was published in 1991, but of course it could have been written at any time before then, only to filed away in a cabinet somewhere, waiting for a publisher to come along and pick it up.

   And if that’s the case, which of course is a matter of high conjecture only, it should have seen print long before it ever did. It’s no classic, but … let me get into that now.

   The private eye who tells the story is Tug Cash, an ex-cop with a disability discharge. His partner on the police force, a heavy-set fellow by the name of Checkers (no first name discernible), is now retired and is running a PI agency. Tug works for him on occasion.

   The “April” in the title is April Tyson, their client in this case, who may be the long-lost missing granddaughter of one of those aged and reclusive multi-millionaires that California is so well known for. When the lawyer who is representing her, and who is also her live-in lover, is found murdered, she calls on the Checkers agency for help.

   That’s one of the story lines. Another has to do with a gang of hoodlums and drug-runners that April’s lawyer seems to have been mixed up with. It is not entirely clear for a good long while whether it was they who are involved in his death, or the gang of hangers-on surrounding the frail Mr. Tyson – including servants, crooked lawyers, crooked doctors, and a right-wing evangelist who, it goes without saying, is as crooked as they come. (The servants are a pretty devious pair themselves.)

   There is twist after twist in this tale, and they are not subtle ones. More like bombshells that explore on contact every once in a while. Pettus has a nice breezy style of writing, it almost goes without saying, with a tendency perhaps of being a little too “prime time,” which is to say that he has a tendency to allow dramatic happenings to overshadow the characters a little too much.

   Which forces Tug Cash to do some very strange things and to make some very strange decisions, some of which had me shaking my head at the time he made them, and sure enough, some very bad things happen as a result. On page 223, Cash calls himself a “crown prince of fools,” and no, I can’t disagree with his judgment there.

   A little lower on the same page, this concept is reinforced by the following. He’s walking on Venice (California) pier:

   In terms of his way with words, here, for what it’s worth, is Pettus’s take on the Santa Ana winds. Judge him for yourself in comparison with how Raymond Chandler (for example) may have said something along the same lines. From page 249:

   A lot of people eventually die in this book, a staggering number so, and all because of one chance event – well, not a chance event, it was deliberate – and for Tug, it turns the entire case around. It was something also made me sit up and think about it as well. While what happened was something I was wondering about all of the way through, it did not at all occur to me that this (I can’t tell you more) is what it was that turns out to have happened.

   If you were wondering, at the end of the book there is only a small hint that Tug Cash is destined to appear again in a followup adventure. In any case, for whatever other reason there was, as it turns out, no he didn’t.

   It’s no classic, but for a book by a professional writer, one with which I found only minor problems to quibble about, as suggested above, you could do worse than keep an eye out for this one.

FOOTNOTE.   A short note from Bill Pronzini confirms that these three doubles are the only books of his that Knightsbridge did. He also passes along all of the information he has about the short-lived company. (See the first comment.)