Fri 11 Jan 2019
Archived PI Review: J. M. T. MILLER – Weatherby: On a Dead Man’s Chest.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
J. M. T. MILLER – Weatherby: On a Dead Man’s Chest. Artie Weatherby #2. Ballantine, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1989.
Billy Bones, a salty sea captain marooned by pirates, buried treasure! I don’t believe I’ve ever read a PI adventure quite like this — a modrn-day murder mystery combined with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and I enjoyed just about every minute of it.
The PI is named Artie Weatherby, and from the way he tells his own story, we know that he isn’t the swiftest thinker in the world, but when he gets caught up in the lust for treasure, the story is tells is well nigh irresistible. Lots of bodies. Lots of fun.
UPDATE. [01-11-19] The first book in the series was Weatherby (1987), which I reviewed here just about two years ago. The third and final case that Weatherby was involved in was The Big Lie (1994), which I have not read, nor do I have a copy of. And for the record once again, the author’s full name is Janice Marie Tubbs Miller.
January 11th, 2019 at 7:07 pm
When you stop to think about it THE MALTESE FALCON is a treasure hunt. Sounds like fun, and fun meant quite a bit as I reached a P.I. burnout around ’89.
January 11th, 2019 at 8:06 pm
Of Miller’s first two Weatherby books, I was underwhelmed by the first one, but while I don’t remember much of this one, my review sure makes it sound as though she’d found her niche in an overcrowded field. I will have to go looking for the third one.
January 18th, 2019 at 9:11 am
Like David, I was weary of the Private Eye template around 1990. I did go to EYECON in Milwaukee to assert that the PI genre was dying (I took a lot of flack for that position).
When I read a private eye novel now, it’s usually from the 1960s–perhaps the heyday of genre with at least a dozen PI series published in paperback.