Wed 9 Nov 2011
A Review by Ray O’Leary: ARTHUR LYONS – Other People’s Money.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
ARTHUR LYONS – Other People’s Money. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1989; paperback, 1990.
Los Angeles private detective (L.A.P.I. for short) Jacob Asch is hired by a Turkish businessman to keep tabs on his daughter, who has come to L.A. with a Greek gentleman. The Turk even springs for two more investigators to assist in the surveillance, but, shortly after the first report, calls off the case.
When one of the assistants suddenly turns up missing, Asch noses about a bit and discovers the body of the Greek gentleman, buried in the yard of a rented house, a discovery that unexpectedly propels him into the world of Stolen Artifacts and dealings in same conducted by prestigious museums and fanatic collectors.
This one’s pretty good; lots of double-crossing, backstabbing, lying, cheating and everything else you look for in a Stolen Artifact book. Try it.
Note: A complete bibliography for Arthur Lyons was posted on this blog at the time of his death in 2008. Follow the link.
November 9th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
I always liked Lyons, and was real sorry when he quit writing to run his Dad’s restaurant.
November 9th, 2011 at 9:59 pm
I’m not sure, but maybe he was glad to have a backup when his book contract ran out. Things like that happened to a lot of PI writers around that same time.
But I’m with you. Lyons was one of the better ones.
November 9th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
I like Arthur Lyons alot also. His private eye, Jacob Asch, was different from the usual PI.
November 10th, 2011 at 12:44 am
Asch was more realistic and down-to-earth than other PI’s of his era. As I recall (and I hope correctly) he did a lot more of the day-to-day, routine drudgery that PI work actually entails, instead of the wildly imaginative exploits you read about only in books.
Here’s what Kevin Burton Smith says about him on the Thrilling Detective website:
Gritty and harsh, yet Jake’s basic decency prevents the novels from degenerating into the bleak, hate-filled doom world of so many contemporary PI novels, where the notion of hard-boiled seems to boil away any sense of hope, and substitute cynicism for character development. Like the Boss said, “Man, the dope is/That there’s still hope.”
https://www.thrillingdetective.com/asch.html