Sun 31 Aug 2014
Reviewed by Allen J. Hubin: JAMES MITCHELL – Dying Day.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
Allen J. Hubin
JAMES MITCHELL – Dying Day. Henry Holt, hardcover, 1989. First published in the UK by H. Hamilton, hardcover, 1988.
James Mitchell has done a number of crime novels, as himself and as James Munro, and now turns up with a London private eye named Ron Hogget. Hogget finds things for people, though the finding usually involves some fearful activities.
Ron is often fearful — he’s that sort of person — but he usually gets the job done. And he has Dave, a friend who drives a cab, reads Literature, knows everything about guns and self-defense and nothing about fear.
Hogget’s second adventure is Dying Day. [But see below.] Here Tony Palliser, filthy rich now from business that began with airplanes — Dakotas — participating in the Berlin airlift in 1948, calls on Hogget’s services. It’s one of those planes, lost at that time, that Palliser now wants Ron to find.
Why, after all these years? Palliser’s reason is thin, but his money is good so Ron starts. And finds he’s not alone on the search, that the real reason must be quite impressive for all the dying being arranged on its behalf. Including, very likely, his…
A solidly constructed, high-tension story with a well-crafted array of characters.
Vol. 11, No. 3, Summer 1989.
The Ron Hogget series —
Sometimes You Could Die. H. Hamilton, 1985. No US edition.
Dead Ernest. H. Hamilton, 1986. Holt, 1987.
Dying Day. H. Hamilton, 1988. Holt, 1989.
August 31st, 2014 at 7:01 pm
I’ve read a few books by Mitchell, but mostly the John Craig books he wrote as James Munro, starting with The Man Who Sold Death from 1964, probably a book club purchase from the Mystery Guild. (Is it still around?)
But I didn’t know about this series at all, and maybe I’d better see if I can’t remedy that.
August 31st, 2014 at 8:00 pm
I never read any of this series, but I liked the books I read in the Callan series, and I liked the James Munro books, too.
August 31st, 2014 at 8:30 pm
Yes, I should have mentioned the Callan series, but I decided not because I’ve read only one of them. Doing some checking, I learned that all of the Callan books were novelizations of the TV series starring Edward Woodward.
Not that it matters too much, since Mitchell was the screenwriter for many if not all of the episodes, starting with the first one, “A Magnum for Schneider,” an episode of ARMCHAIR THEATRE, 4 February 1967.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061940/reference
The book came later, in 1969.
September 1st, 2014 at 1:32 am
I didn’t care for this as much as the Mitchell and Munro books, Craig being an interesting character.
Craig got one film outing, THE INNOCENT BYSTANDERS with Stanley Baker well cast as Craig and Donald Pleasance Loomis, his boss.
The Callan books were excellent novelizations though.