Wed 29 Oct 2014
KEN ROTHROCK – The Deadly Welcome. Major Books, paperback original, 1976.
No matter how obscure a book or an author may be — and I believe this one qualifies on both counts — if there’s a PI in it, I will probably read it, or at least give it an all out try.
Rick North, who tells the story in first person, qualifies as a private detective, barely. He’s low man on the totem pole at Taber, Kline and North, an artist’s management firm based in LA, but he’s about to be booted out of the firm unless he finds out who has been threatening the life of Rory Maclaine, one of their clients and a comedian who’s just hit the big time.
Threats are one thing, but when Maclaine collapses and dies on stage after finishing his new act, North, who used to be a comedian himself until he found his career going nowhere, now finds he must solve the case, or else.
After a slightly shaky start, the tale that follows is solid enough, but a clutter of too any characters, all of whom seem to be acting individually in various and sundry ways, slow the story down to a near crawl around the two-thirds point. It has to be hard, in my opinion, for a new writer to maintain his (or her) momentum for the entirety of a full-length novel, no matter what kind of twist you plan on ending it with. And so it is here.
As for the author, Al Hubin in Crime Fiction IV, says that Ken Rothrock is probably Harley Kent Rothrock (1939-1999), but Google reveals no more. This was his only work of detective fiction, a good effort, but cliched. Maybe if North had been better at a quip (he isn’t), the ride would have been a little less bumpy.
October 29th, 2014 at 10:02 pm
If anyone’s interested in obtaining a copy, there is one book available on Amazon. It’s in “Acceptable” condition and will cost you only a penny. (Plus $3.99 for shipping.)
For a copy in VG or better, there are three for sale online; asking price: between $20 and $40.
I think I paid a dollar for mine, but it’s not in very good shape.
Major Books was a small publisher based in California. I lived on the East Coast in the late 70s and other than the SF titles, I never saw a single one of their books until the Internet came along. For some reason their science fiction books seem to have sold; the rest — mostly a standard line of genre fiction and non-fiction — were never contenders.
November 7th, 2014 at 8:09 am
Not one I’d look for. I have a vague memory of someone else reviewing this, perhaps for DAPA-Em.
November 7th, 2014 at 9:08 am
Richard
You may be right. I don’t think it was Dan, otherwise he’d have said something. It could have been Gary Warren Niebuhr. He covered loads of PIs and PI-like characters in A READER’S GUIDE TO THE PRIVATE EYE NOVEL, including obscure ones, and a lot of the reviews showed up ahead of time in his DAPA-Em zine.
February 16th, 2016 at 11:37 am
Just wanted to comment the author wasn’t Kent Rothrock as he was my father and never wrote a novel.
February 16th, 2016 at 1:54 pm
Libby
I’ll so inform Al Hubin, and he’ll make the correction. I appreciate the information!
May 10th, 2017 at 2:03 pm
It was my father and his name was Kenneth Rothrock.
May 10th, 2017 at 2:08 pm
Never went by Harry Kent Rothrock. But, sometimes Keith Rothrock. FYI