Sat 17 Sep 2016
MARC DAVIS – Dirty Money. Dell, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1992.
This is the author’s only work of crime fiction, a one-shot private eye novel taking place in Chicago. The PI in question is a fellow named Frank Wolf, and since by profession Marc Davis was a commodities broker with that city’s Board of Trade, it’s not surprising that most of the underlying plot has to do with the selling of wheat, soybeans, silver, mortgages and the like.
Although hardly a broker himself, Wolf does have a serious gambling problem, the consequences of which form part of the underlying story line. The dead man was a broker, though, someone Wolf had known since grade school — one of the high-living people who can’t resist the thrill of taking risks. It’s just that he was a success at it– until, that is, he did someone enough wrong as to do him in.
This is one of those stories in which the lowly PI falls in love with the dead man’s daughter, the consequences of which also forms part of the underlying story line. This is also one of those stories which are overwritten, in my opinion, in both the opening and closing chapters. It’s the middle section that flows the easiest, in more or less standard PI style, this making this a book worth picking up, should you ever find yourself face to face with a copy, out there somewhere in the wild, as recently happened to me.
September 18th, 2016 at 12:25 am
I always feel a little sorry for private eye writers who came a little late to the boom. I suspect some would have fared better if they just arrived a few years earlier.
September 18th, 2016 at 12:07 pm
In this case, as far as the author was concerned, my sense is that it was one and done anyway.
September 18th, 2016 at 4:08 pm
Marc Davis has also written BOTTOM LINE, Permanent Press, 2013. I have not read it, but the book’s plot summary indicates that it is criminous. The author has a website that lists both BOTTOM LINE and DIRTY MONEY as credits.
September 18th, 2016 at 4:32 pm
Here’s the last paragraph of the synopsis as found on Amazon. You’re right, Bill. It does qualify as crime fiction:
“… A series of financial crimes ensue, instigated by the CEO – fradulent accounting to help clients seemingly make their estimated profits; insider trading by the avaricious CEO, to help him reap millions in personal profits. With his company near collapse, the CEO absconds with millions of dollars held in trust in a partners’ bonus pool. The protagonist of the novel then begins hunting him down, using the methods of a private eye.”