Sat 5 Oct 2019
Archived PI Mystery Review: ROBERT UPTON – The Faberge Egg.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
ROBERT UPTON – The Faberge Egg. Amos McGuffin #4. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1988. No paperback edition.
Amos McGuffin has been a San Francisco PI for 18 years, but he’s never had a case like this one. First. his ex-wife and daughter disappear. The trail leads to the man who killed his mentor in the PI business when he first started out., and then on to the egg hunt.
A hunt conducted by a pair of gay German war vets, before the KCB gets involved, as well as his partner’s daughter. The resemblance to Hammett is unmistakable. I suppose you’d call it an homage. Whenever it’s this blatant, I think you’d have to, but it’s still enormous fun.
The Amos McGuffin series —
1. Who’d Want To Kill Old George? (1977)
2. Fade Out (1984)
3. Dead On the Stick (1986)
4. The Faberge Egg (1988)
5. A Killing in Real Estate (1990)
6. The Billionaire (2017)
October 5th, 2019 at 9:45 am
I don’t remember this one at all; from my review, it looks as though it would be worth reading again.
October 5th, 2019 at 12:20 pm
Heck of a span from book #5 and #6, I don’t remember seeing that he has written anything else.
October 5th, 2019 at 1:19 pm
The last one is available only as an eBook. My thought is that it’s one he’d written soon after the others but was never accepted for publication. But when the he or his family got the others digitalized (as they seem to have done) they did this one too.
October 5th, 2019 at 1:25 pm
According to the Fantastic Fiction website, Upton has written two other novels, one or both of which may be marginally crime fiction:
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/u/robert-upton/
Novels
A Golden Fleecing (1979)
The Big Tour (2002)
October 5th, 2019 at 5:37 pm
Sounds like fun even if it sails a bit close on the homage business.