REVIEWED BY JEFF MEYERSON:         

MARK SADLER – Circle of Fire. Random House, 1973. Berkley, paperback, 1989.

MARK SADLER Paul Shaw

   Mark Sadler is a pseudonym of the prolific Dennis Lynds, who also writes as Michael Colllins (about Dan Fortune) , William Arden, and John Crowe. As Sadler he writes about private eye Paul Shaw. Circle of Fire is the fourth in the series, a complex book that is readable without being outstanding.

   Paul Shaw is called in to investigate when Dick Delaney, his California partner, is shot and seriously wounded while working on a case. Local politician Russell Dobson was blown up in a car with Lilian Marsak, whom he apparently had just picked up.

   Shaw must determine whether the killer had a personal or political motive for getting Dobson out of the way, and eventually must decide if he was the intended victim after all.

   What did Delaney find out that got him shot? The book is very complicated and somewhat confusing, and Shaw is a little slow in recognizing one of the major possibilities in the case. It’s competent enough, I guess, but it has all been done before, and better (including the author’s own Dan Fortune series).

   One switch: for once the out-of-town investigator is not continually hassled by the local police.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1977.


The Paul Shaw series —

    The Falling Man. Random House, 1970.
    Here to Die. Random House, 1971.
    Mirror Image. Random House, 1972.

MARK SADLER Paul Shaw

    Circle of Fire. Random House, 1973.
    Touch of Death. Raven House, 1981.

MARK SADLER Paul Shaw

    Deadly Innocents. Walker, 1986.