Tue 28 Jan 2020
Archived Mystery Review: STANLEY ELLIN – The Luxembourg Run.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
STANLEY ELLIN – The Luxembourg Run. Random House, hardcover, 1977. Ballantine, paperback, 1979.
When a mystery writer takes the extra time to fill in the background of his characters, the result is too often uninteresting or turns out to be of little or no use to the plot. Not so when a storyteller like Stanley Ellin. The life of of David Hanna Shaw, a college dropout who becomes Amsterdam’s :King of the Hippies: before tuning to a trans-European career of currency smuggling, is fascinating from beginning to end.
In The Luxembourg Run his turnabout task of avenging the death of his girl friend Anneke at the hands of hijackers who forcefully relieve him of a million dollar consignment is nearly a foregone conclusion — how could it be otherwise after he inherits ten million dollars of his own from a wealthy grandfather? Still it’s not all roses, not at all, and just as Ellin obviously believes in his characters, so will the reader.
January 28th, 2020 at 7:54 pm
I wish I could back in time and tell myself to write longer reviews, but it’s probably too late now. I read what I had to say back then, and I just don’t think my younger self explained not nearly enough why he enjoyed this one so much.
Not to my satisfaction now.
And I also see that at that stage of my reading career, I was much more a fan of plot in the mystery fiction I read, than I was of character.
To tell you the truth, though, I probably still am.
January 29th, 2020 at 9:51 am
Ellin is a superb craftsman. He should be a household name.
January 29th, 2020 at 8:09 pm
Ellin is probably a forgotten author today, but even when he was alive, he was much better known as a short story writer. He seemed to produce one a year, and each was a polished gem.