MICHAEL BOWEN – Corruptly Procured. Richard Michaelson #3. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1994. No paperback edition.

   Bowen has another three-book series going about a married couple, plus at least one other book, but the Michaelson books are the only ones I’ve read. None have appeared in paperback, as far as I know, which is a shame.

   Richard Michaelson is a retired Foreign Service man in his early sixties, hoping for an appointment someday to a top policy post at State but so far disappointed. He is approached by a man who once worked for him, now a top DC lawyer, to do some consulting work for which he seems ill-suited, a a price which seems high.

   Puzzled, but not enough so to overcome his lack of interest, he refuses. The offer is made at a gathering at a branch of the Library of Congress, and shortly thereafter a bomb explodes, injuring Richard and masking the theft of a priceless Gutenberg Bible. While he is in the hospital a high-ranking Treasury official urges him to accept the consulting job, for reasons left shadowy.

   A hitherto unremarkable German activist group claims credit for the bombing and theft, and vows more. Can it all be connected? Well, of course it can, silly.

   I like the Michaelson books. If Bowen doesn’t know his way around the Capital and its machinations and flora and fauna, he fakes it well. He tells his story form multiple viewpoints — though Michaelson’s is by far predominant — and keeps it moving in a reltively straight but very complex line.

   This one was perhaps a little more complex than usual, and a trifle more melodramatic, but still enjoyable. Michaelson and his bookstore-ownng lady Miranda [Marjorie?] are amiable characters, and I look forward to seeing them again.

      The Richard Michaelson series —

1. Washington Deceased (1990)

2. Faithfully Executed (1992)
3. Corruptly Procured (1994)
4. Worst Case Scenario (1996)
5. Collateral Damage (1999)

   The husband-and-wife series that Barry referred to in his first paragraph must be the Thomas Curry and Sandrine Cadette Curry books, of which there were three (1989-1993). He also wrote five books about Rep and Melissa Pennyworth between 2001 and 2009, and one book (so far) about Josie Kendall (2016). These plus three apparent standalones constitute quite a substantial mystery writing career.

BENJAMIN SCHUTZ – Mexico Is Forever. Leo Haggerty #6. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1994. No paperback edition.

   For someone who has won both Shamus and Edgar Awards, Schutz isn’t all that well known. After the traumatic events that took place in A Fistful of Empty, I wondered where he would go with Haggerty, and even if he would. As you can see he has, for at least one more book.

   Leo is carrying on with his private detective agency in Washington, DC, still numbed emotionally from the events of the recent past but making do. His current case involves establishing the (preferably false) identity of a young female claimant to a modestly large estate. He manages to pierce the facade of the beautiful and enigmatic woman, but in doing so finds yet anther wall, and behind this one are secrets that in the bringing to light reach the opposite coast and threaten the lives of not only the woman but Haggerty himself.

   For the most part, I think this is one of the better of the Haggerty books. It is atypically for Schutz non-violent until the end of the book, and features a good bit of realistic detective work that is reminiscent of Joe Gores’ DKA stories. Not too surprisingly. Gores’ characters play bit parts in this story.

   Schutz’s first-person narrative skills are excellent, and his prose is clean and lean. While characterization is brief except for Haggerty and the mysterious woman, it’s adequate to the story, and excellent for the two.

   I’m not quite sure what I think about the ending, though it was certainly interesting, and once again raises questions about where we go from here. I understand that Schutz’s next book is non-Haggerty, so we may have to wait a while for an answer.

     The Leo Haggerty series —

          NOVELS

Embrace the Wolf (1985)

All the Old Bargains (1985)
A Tax in Blood (1987)

The Things We Do For Love (1989)
A Fistful of Empty (1991)
Mexico Is Forever (1994)

          SHORT STORIES

“Mary, Mary, Shut the Door” (1992, Deadly Allies)
“What Goes Around” (1994, Deadly Allies II)
“Lost and Found” (1999, Death Cruise)

          COLLECTION

Mary, Mary, Shut the Door (2005; includes among others the three Haggerty stories above)

CRAIG McDONALD – One True Sentence. Minotaur Books, hardcover, February 2011. Betimes Books, softcover, revised edition, August 2014.

   The year is 1924 and expatriate Hector Lassiter, one of the “Lost Generation,” is in Paris writing when on a dark night he hears a scream as he walks in the snow on the Pont Neuf bridge.

   He doesn’t see anything that night, but soon enough, he and his friend Ernest Hemingway are up to their necks against a bizarre Nihilists cult called Nada, led by a mutilated man in a black mask calling himself Nobodaddy (from William Blake) who seem to be murdering off the editor publishers of impoverished little small press magazine of the type common in Paris at the time, and eventually playing at detectives under the direction of Gertrude Stein, a fact complicated when Lassiter is also drafted by Commissaire Aristide Simon as an agent of the police.

   One True Sentence is a historical thriller in the nine-book series by Edgar and Anthony award nominee Craig McDonald featuring Hector Lassiter, a crime writer who made his debut in 2007’s Head Games (set in 1957). Now the series has been reissued by Betimes Books in internal chronological order, beginning with One True Sentence. (See below.)

   Lassiter is an attractive protagonist (literally, he looks like William Holden), whose life covers much of American history in the 20th century. Here, amidst poseurs, literary icons, painters, poets, Dadaists, Surrealists, and a cold Paris winter he meets and falls in love with the dark mysterious Blinke Devlin, who also writes mystery novels of the locked room kind, under a male pseudonym, and has other mysteries to hide; Molly Wilder, a beautiful poet with a possibly fatal crush on him; Phillipe her painter boyfriend who involved her with the Nada movement; and the rather nasty Estelle Quartermain, an English mystery writer and expert on poisons.

   One theme running through the book is that almost no one is exactly who they claim to be, leaving Hector stumbling through a maze of aliases, lies, secrets, and puzzles, each arising as another has been seemingly solved.

   One True Sentence is a sexy, fast-paced mystery that generates more than a little suspense and includes appropriately bitchy portraits of actual figures of the era including Aleister Crowley, Ford Maddox Ford, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Beach, and others.

   There is more going on here than just a fine evocation of Paris in that era, though. This is also a funny, tricky, horrifying, sexy, and ultimately involving mystery with enough twists and turns to delight any fan of the Golden Age puzzle school, and a protagonist of the two-fisted hard boiled type who even writes for Black Mask.

   Each book stands alone, but characters, both major and minor weave in and out of the rest of the series and the four books of McDonald’s Chris Lyon series which is also tied to the Lassiter books.

   The background is smartly sketched in, the characters witty and interesting, the action moves fast, the hero and various heroines aren’t eunuchs or virgins without the sex being overly graphic, and the more preposterous elements of the books are done with such sense of fun that only a grouch could really complain.

   I’m looking forward to exploring more of the century with Hector Lassiter. The books are literate without being literary, funny without being silly, and smart without shouting out loud at you how clever they are. Any one of those would be reason to read most books.

       The Hector Lassiter series —

1. One True Sentence (2011)
2. Forever’s Just Pretend (2014)

3. Toros & Torsos (2008)
4. The Great Pretender (2014)
5. Roll the Credits (2014)
6. The Running Kind (2014)

7. Head Games (2007)
8. Print the Legend (2010)
9. Death in the Face (2015)

10. Three Chords & The Truth (2016)

       The Chris Lyon series —

1. Parts Unknown (2012)
2. Carnival Noir (2013)
3. Cabal (2013)
4. Angels of Darkness (2013)

JANET NEEL – Death Among the Dons. Francesca & John MacLeish #4. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1994. Pocket, US, paperback, 1995. First published in the UK by Constable, hardcover, 1993.

   My only problem with Janet Neel is that she’s just written four books. She’s among my favorite British writers.

   Francesca Wilson, now married to Superintendent John MacLeish, is having a rough time of it. Her 6-month old son won’t sleep, and neither can Francesca. She and motherhood aren’t sgreeing at all. During a more-or-less enforced visit to a health spa, she makes the acquaintance of a woman who is tapped to take over Gladstone University, an all-female College, after the former head is found dead of an overdose of Valium.

   Francesca is asked to assume the part-time and temporary post of Bursar as the school, to straighten out its horrendously messed-up finances. She accepts and steps into a mare’s nest of political intrigue and academic in-fighting. Then two students are attacked, and a professor is almost killed.

   Neel’s major (though certainly not her only) strength lies in her characters. Though Francesca (MacLeish’s role is secondary) is kept at he center of the story, she is only one of the major characters. The story is told in the third person from several viewpoints, and the most prominent one is that of the newly-appointed head, an aging but still strong woman.

   Numerous other characters play significant roles, and all are sharply and convincingly drawn. Francesca and John remain one of the most likale pairs in crime fiction, and their personal lives are mixed unobtrusively with a very good and well-told story.

   This is an excellent book in all respects, by a writer who deserves to be recognized as one of the best if she already isn’t.

The Francesca Wilson & John MacLeish series —

1. Death’s Bright Angel (1988)

2. Death on Site (1989)
3. Death of a Partner (1991)
4. Death Among the Dons (1993)
5. A Timely Death (1996)

6. To Die For (1998)
7. O Gentle Death (2000)

SPARKLE HAYTER – What’s a Girl Gotta Do. Robin Hudson #1. Soho Press, hardcover, 1994. Penguin, paperback, 1995.

   Hayter is a TV newswoman who has worked for CNN and WABC, and this is her first novel. She’s also been a standup comic. Would you believe I actually bought this, on a whim?

   Robin Hudson is a third-string reporter — fallen from better times — for ANN, a news network obviously modeled on CNN. In the process of being divorced from an unfaithful husband, she is not in the mood for a package of material from someone who has fond out a lot about her she isn’t particularly proud of.

   She’s supposed to meet the man at a hotel where the network is having a party, but he doesn’t answer his door. The next day he’s found dead in the hotel room, and it turns out he was trying to blackmail several of the network’s employees. But why, and who was he working for?

   Hayter does have a way with words — “dumber than a sack of hammers” and “a few bees short of a hive” were just a couple of phrases that caught my eye early on. I liked Robin Hudson, and I liked the quick, sure hand Hayter showed with the other characterizations. She writes a bit better than she plots, as is nearly always the case these days with first novelists. This one wasn’t egregious, though, and only broke down a little toward the end.

   I thought is was a strong contender for the First Novel Edgar most of the way through, and I’m not sure I still don’t. I liked Hayter’s maiden voyage a lot.

      The Robin Hudson series —

1. What’s A Girl Gotta Do? (1994)
2. Nice Girls Finish Last (1996)

3. Revenge of the Cootie Girls (1997)
4. The Last Manly Man (1998)

5. The Chelsea Girl Murders (2000)

CONRAD ALLEN – Murder on the Mauretania. George Porter Dillman & Genevieve Masefield #2. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, December 2000; paperback, January 2002. Gerald Duckworth and Co Ltd, UK, softcover, 2002.

   If I can’t read a mystery taking place on a train, the next best thing is one that takes place on an ocean liner crossing either the Atlantic or the Pacific. It’s a happy combination of travel, limited access, and the proximity of new people to meet — and once a murder has been committed, a whole list of possible suspects.

   This second adventure in crime for the detective twosome of George Porter Dillman and Genevieve Masefield takes place in 1906 aboard the maiden voyage of the Mauretania, the pride of the Cunard Line — the biggest and the fastest at the time and for many years to come. They met in Murder on the Lusitania, the first book in the series and are now not only co-workers on board ship, but lovers as well.

   Conrad Allen certainly did his research before tackling this book, and it shows. Details of life aboard all three the ship’s passenger levels are described in detail, from the elegance of first class as compared to the cramped quarters of third.

   The book starts out leisurely enough, with the only crimes Dillman is required to investigate are some thefts of silver jewelry, and he very quickly has his eye on the most likely suspect. But after a hige afternoon squall, the man has disappeared. He’s nowhere to be found. Has it anything to due with a fortune in gold bullion the ship is also carrying?

   You bet it does.

   And lest you think Genevieve Masefield has nothing to with the story, her portion of the job is to mingle with the passengers in first class, and keep on eye on an elegant lady who seems to have nothing in common with the man who is masquerading as her husband.

   A long, nearly 300 pages of fine, sophisticated detective work. I think Dillman and Masefield could not help but love their jobs!

       The George Porter Dillman and Genevieve Masefield series —

1. Murder on the Lusitania (1999)

2. Murder On the Mauretania (2000)
3. Murder On the Minnesota (2002)
4. Murder on the Caronia (2003)
5. Murder on the Marmora (2004)

6. Murder on the Salsette (2005)
7. Murder on the Oceanic (2006)
8. Murder on the Celtic (2007)

NOTE:   Conrad Allen is but one of the pen names to have been used by British author Keith Miles, aka David Garland, Martin Inigo, Edward Marston, and Christopher T Mountjoy.

KATHERINE HALL PAGE – Murder in the Belfry. Faith Fairchild #1. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1990. Avon, paperback, 1991.

   Finding the body is [the former] Faith Sibley, displaced New Yorker and now the wife of a minister in a small New England town. The dead girl has been president of the Young People’s Club, but she was also a blackmailer, and worse — and somebody probably wanted her stopped.

   At first this is a “let’s solve a murder — it’ll be such fun” type of book, but when the dead girl’s innocent boy friend is suspected, a real reason for finding the killer emerges. Unfortunately Faith stumbles onto the truth almost by accident, spoiling the ending more than a little.

[UPDATE.] Faith Sibley’s married name is Faith Fairchild, and this is how she is known throughout the rest of series. If you has asked me in 1990 when I wrote this review how many books would end up being in the series, I’m sure I’d have said three or four. I believe that was the standard publishers contract at the time for a new series. Unless the books and the leading characters caught on, and for Katherine Hall Page, I’m happy to say that they did. See for yourself:

      The Faith Fairchild series —

1. The Body in the Belfry (1990)
2. The Body in the Kelp (1990)
3. The Body in the Bouillon (1991)
4. The Body in the Vestibule (1992)
5. The Body in the Cast (1993)
6. The Body in the Basement (1994)
7. The Body in the Bog (1996; aka The Body in the Marsh)
8. The Body in the Fjord (1997)
9. The Body in the Bookcase (1998)
10. The Body in the Big Apple (1999)
11. The Body in the Moonlight (2001)
12. The Body In The Bonfire (2002)
13. The Body in the Lighthouse (2003)
14. The Body in the Attic (2004)
15. The Body in the Snowdrift (2005)
16. The Body in the Ivy (2006)
17. The Body in the Gallery (2008)
18. The Body in the Sleigh (2009)
19. The Body in the Gazebo (2011)
20. The Body in the Boudoir (2012)
21. The Body in the Piazza (2013)
22. The Body in the Birches (2015)
23. The Body in the Wardrobe (2016)
24. The Body in the Casket (2017)

MAX ALLAN COLLINS – The Baby Blue Rip-Off. Mallory #1. Walker, hardcover, 1983. Tor, paperback, November 1987.

   It takes a while in this, Mallory’s first appearance, for details of who he is to be filled in. But as the story goes on, we learn that is is an ex-Viet Nam vet as well as a former cop, and is now beginning a career as a mystery writer. He’s also just moved back to the small home town of Port City, Iowa. (By the end of the book, though, his first name is still not known, at least by me.)

   The book begins as he describes how he’s been inveigled by a girl friend (who then almost immediately splits on him) into volunteering as a Meals on Wheels delivery person for the elderly. This may be a first (and only?) as an occupation for the leading character in a mystery novel.

   But what this does is to serve as a means for Mallory to get involved in his first case of actual murder. When he arrives at the home of one of the elderly women on his route, he finds a gang of thieves ransacking the place, and worse, he discovers the woman herself tied to a chair and very much dead.

   Besides taking her death as personal affront and deciding to find the ones responsible on his own, he also gets involved with an old flame from high school who now needs his help. One thing leads to another in that regard as well.

   Collins tells the story in a nice breezy tone that’s as comfortable as an old pair of shoes, with more than a bit of nostalgia mixed in. It’s also very well plotted — three solid reasons why I’m hooked and will go on to read the rest of series as soon as I can. There were four more. See below:

       The Mallory series —

1. The Baby Blue Rip-Off (1982)
2. No Cure for Death (1983)
3. Kill Your Darlings (1984)
4. A Shroud for Aquarius (1985)
5. Nice Weekend for a Murder (1986)

ASHLEY WEAVER – Death Wears a Mask. Amory Ames #2. Minotaur Books, hardcover, October 2015; trade paperback, September 2016.

   Although not intended, I imagine, for most readers of this blog, as a detective mystery novel, this is a book — as well as a series — that has a lot going for it. It has, first of all, a spunky heroine named Amory Ames, a young married woman who is quite at home in the wealthy upperclass set in England in the 1930s. She loves her husband, but he in turn seems to have a restless eye, a fact that causes a lot of heartache between the two of them.

   Lots of romantic conflict and stress, in other words, but what’s also of interest to modern day readers is that Amory has a growing reputation for solving mysteries. This, her second venture into solving a murder, starts slowly, though, as she is asked by a friend to find out who has been stealing some of her jewelry. A bracelet studded with fake sapphires is chosen as bait for the thief. And where? At as masquerade ball.

   Before the ball is over, however, a man is dead, but why? Did he confront the thief? He can’t have been the thief because he was in on the plan, and he knew the jewels were only paste. Surprisingly enough, the same policeman who was on the job in Amory’s first adventure, Murder at the Brightwell, manages to turn up again, but this time working for Scotland Yard.

   And since the world in which the murder takes place, that of the well-to-do and wealthy, does he ask Amory to snoop around and see what she can learn about all of the suspects, who are limited in number, but who live in a class that Inspector Jones can hardly expect to penetrate? In a word, yes.

   Overshadowing the case, however, is Amory’s problem with her husband Milo, who always has excuses for long stays away from home, and worse, has had his photo in the newspapers kissing a well-known French actress. Is a divorce in the works? On the other side of the coin is the attention that a certain Lord Dunmore is paying Amory.

   The mystery is complicated, but it’s nowhere near the level of that of an Agatha Christie novel, or even a Georgette Heyer mystery, both of whom are prominently referred to in the blurbs on the back cover. If you get the idea from the preceding paragraph that as much time is spent with Amory’s marital difficulties as with solving the mystery, I suspect that you may be correct.

   Personally, while I don’t know what’s going on with Milo — a theme that will assuredly be carried along in the next book — but I think he’s a dope to leave poor Amory twisting in the wind as he does.

The Amory Ames series —

1. Murder At the Brightwell (2014).     Edgar nominee for Best First Novel.

2. Death Wears a Mask (2015).
3. A Most Novel Revenge (2016).
4. The Essence of Malice (2017).
5. Intrigue in Capri (2017).

BILL PRONZINI – Quincannon. John Quincannon #1. Walker, hardcover, 1985. Berkley, paperback, September 2001.

   When readers of this blog see Bill Pronzini’s name, I’m sure that most of them will immediately think of his Nameless PI series, and rightfully so, since there are over 40 of them. A good percentage of these readers will also know him as the author of a large number of straight suspense novels. Relatively fewer will associate him with an additional 8 or 10 western novels, however, some published under other names.

   What you can count on with a Pronzini book, though, no matter what genre, is one that is is well-researched, will-plotted, and above all well-dialogued (if such is actually a word). Quincannon is actually a hybrid, a crossover between a western and a detective novel. The leading character is John Quincannon a longtime agent for the Secret Service in the 1890s, based in San Francisco. The case which he’s assigned to in this, his first recorded adventure, is finding out who’s flooding the West Coast with phony currency and counterfeit silver eagles and half-eagles.

   The trail leads him to a small mining town in Idaho, but unfortunately Quincannon is suffering from a bad case of the whiskey blues. If the word alcoholic was in use then, he would be one. His present is constantly clouded by the memory of the young pregnant woman he accidentally killed on on earlier assignment.

   But completely sober or not, in the guise of a patent medicine salesman, he’s still capable of doing the detective work needed to crack the case. Of even more importance, perhaps, is that in doing so, his path crosses that of a young independent woman named Sabina Carpenter, who has an uncanny resemblance to the woman whose death he was responsible for. And more, she also does not seem to be whom she claims to be.

   That they end up working together is a fact that followers of their combined careers already know. At the end of the book there is a strong hint that they will continue to be partners in a San Francisco-based private investigation business, which of course they did.

Bibliographic Notes:   Following this book, Quincannon next appeared in Beyond the Grave (1986), co-authored with Marcia Muller. Carpenter and Quincannon then appeared in a long list of short stories, some co-written by Myarcia Muller and most if not all collected in:

Carpenter & Quincannon, Professional Detective Services (1998).

Burgade’s Crossing (2003).
Quincannon’s Game (2005).

   Eventually the pair began appearing in book form, in the following list of novels, under the combined byline of Muller and Pronzini:

The Bughouse Affair (2013).

The Spook Lights Affair (2013).
The Body Snatchers Affair (2015).
The Plague of Thieves Affair (2016).
The Dangerous Ladies Affair (2017).