ROBERT MARTIN – She, Me and Murder. Jim Bennett #12. Curtis, paperback original, 1962. Expanded version of the story that appeared in Dime Detective Magazine, November 1948.
Jim Bennett, who may have been Cleveland’s first fictional private eye, is hired by an elderly man who has befriended a young stage actress, When her current boy friend is killed, there are only three possible suspects.
As opposed to the prose of an Ed McBain, for example, which scorches and sings, Martin’ is – at first – plain, dowdy, and chaste. The pace picks up, however, when Bennett’s secretary/fiancee is kidnapped, and the triple-switch at the ending is a doozy.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.3, February 1988.
