Mon 18 May 2020
L. A. MORSE The Old Dick. Jake Spanner #1. Avon, paperback original 1981. Made for TV movie: Jake Spanner, Private Eye (USA Network, 1989, with Robert Mitchum as Jake Spanner).
There have been a number of detectives in the world of mystery fiction whom you’ve have to call “elderly,†but at age seventy-eight . I think Jake Spanner has most of them beat. Miss Marple, I believe, was up in her eighties when she was still active, and some of you with better memories than mine can probably come up with more right away.
But how many of these would you all hard-boiled private eyes? In his own words, Jake Spanner has always tried never to give satisfaction to assholes, if he could help it, and now that he’s retired, he see no reason to change.
He hasn’t had an erection in five years, either, or so he says at the beginning of chapter one. How old he is soon begins to sound like an obsession with him, but with old duffers like this, sometimes you just put up with things like that a little bit more.
Spanner comes out of retirement in this book, as you would have guessed, but throughout it all, he remains pretty much surprised by it. At any rate, he decides to give a helping hand to a one-time enemy from the old days, a gangster known as Sal the Salami (for reasons we won’t go into here). It seems that his grandson has been kidnapped, complication begin to develop and thrive, deliciously so.
I don’t know who the author is. If someone were to tell me it’s not his first book, that he’s written loads of others, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. L. A. Morse, whoever he is, has an inventive touch that adds tremendously to a rather familiar story, plus a consistent style and a slightly vulgar sense of humor to match.
There are some books in which you’re lucky to get one of the above.
Rating: A minus.
May 18th, 2020 at 1:04 pm
Who knew when I first wrote this review, almost 40 years ago, that I’d posting it “online” for the whole world to read, and that I’d then be the same age as the protagonist in this book. Not me, I didn’t.
May 18th, 2020 at 4:05 pm
Well, you’re doing pretty good for a person of your advanced years if I do say so myself (a mere 71 so far).
May 18th, 2020 at 6:02 pm
I wonder what the median age is for regular readers of this blog. I have a feeling, but no more than that, that it skews old.
But as they say, young at heart. And until I look in the mirror or go out jogging, I feel as good as I did at 60.
May 18th, 2020 at 6:09 pm
Spanner has to be one of the older in print. Art Carny played an older eye in Robert Benton’s THE LATE SHOW, but other than a recent Philip Marlowe pastiche I can’t think of another eye in that age range unless you want to go back to Seth Carter, Nick’s Dad or David Hume’s Mick Carby’s Dad.
May 18th, 2020 at 6:56 pm
I had forgotten about that Art Carney movie, which came out in 1977 before Morse’s book. I wonder if he happens to have seen it before starting to write THE OLD DICK. In terms of inspiration, I mean. I don’t recall the stories being at all similar.
But if you couldn’t come up with any other contenders in the 40 years since, it is strange that no one else picked up on the idea. Maybe someone else knows of one neither you nor I are thinking of.
May 18th, 2020 at 7:30 pm
There is newer series of books by Daniel Friedman about Buck Shatz, an 87 year old retired detective. Haven’t read the books, but they received some decent reviews on Amazon.
May 18th, 2020 at 8:09 pm
Aha. Thanks, David. I knew you or someone more up on recent mysteries than I am would come through, if there was one:
Buck Schatz
1. Don’t Ever Get Old (2012)
2. Don’t Ever Look Back (2014)
3. Running Out of Road (2020)
“When Buck Schatz, senior citizen and retired Memphis cop, learns that an old adversary may have escaped Germany with a fortune in stolen gold, Buck decides to hunt down the fugitive and claim the loot. But a lot of people want a piece of the stolen treasure, and Buck’s investigation quickly attracts unfriendly attention from a very motley (and murderous) crew in Daniel Friedman’s Don’t Ever Get Old.”
May 18th, 2020 at 8:37 pm
Steve,
Thanks for posting this review. I read this book back in the early 80’s after our visit to Walker Martin, when he showed us the new detective pbo’s that Avon was putting out. This and “Brown’s Requiem” by Ellroy are the most memorable for me. I never knew they made a movie of it though. I’ll have to search it out.
May 18th, 2020 at 8:42 pm
I remember reading that Ellroy book back then too. It was a paperback original, his first novel, and I was very impressed by it. His later work not so much.
May 18th, 2020 at 9:31 pm
How old was the Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy?
May 19th, 2020 at 1:20 pm
He was a man of mystery. I don’t think anyone knew his name, much less how old he was. But I might be wrong about that!
May 19th, 2020 at 6:43 am
There’s the amateur detective Gramps Wiggins by Erle Stanley Gardner.
And the Captain Sunset short stories by James Powell. As Powell’s website puts it: ” Captain Sunset, the champion of the elderly, is a hero designed by a committee (of senior citizens) to fight crime.”
He’s a fictitious character, but the seniors make his actions seem real.
May 19th, 2020 at 6:44 am
Ronald Tierney had a series about “semi-retired” PI “Deets” Shanahan, but I don’t remember how old he was supposed to be.
L. A. Morse was more known (notorious?) at the time for the very hardboiled (and sexually explicit) books about PI Sam Hunter, the first of which was THE BIG ENCHILADA.
May 19th, 2020 at 1:26 pm
That’s a Good Laugh on me, Jeff. I just posted a review on this blog of one of Tierney’s books, done by Barry Gardner:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=67650
Age unknown, but my guess is late 60s, late 70s.
I remember buying the Sam Hunter books — two of them, as I recall — but I never got around to reading them. Perhaps I’m OK with that. I tried reading some of Henry Kane’s X-rated Peter Chambers books. Really really awful.
May 19th, 2020 at 7:09 am
There are also the excellent “Grandfather Rastin Mysteries” by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. They are collected in book form. Grandfather Rastin is an octogenarian.
There are any number of TV mysteries set in retirement homes. Example: “The Brokenwood Mysteries” from New Zealand had an episode “As If Nothing Had Happened” (2017). Or see the “Diagnosis Murder” episode “A Resting Place” (2000).
The imdb suggests that “The Old Dick” was also filmed in Japan, as “Yokohama Monogatari” (1985). I can read that! Monogatari means “Tales of”. So the title means “Tales of Yokohama”, where Yokohama is the port city near Tokyo.
May 19th, 2020 at 1:27 pm
Except for maybe The Old Man in the Corner, it looks as though Grandfather Rastin in his 80s tops everyone so far,
May 19th, 2020 at 7:19 am
The title might also be translated as “Yokohama Story”.
May 19th, 2020 at 9:51 pm
The illustrations accompanying the Old Man in the Corner don’t look much older than the sixties at most.
Arsene Lupin was at least in his sixties in this last adventures if gentleman rogues count.
We are all overlooking one of the classics, Lecoq’s mentor, and Lecoq himself in the pastiche written by Fortune du Boisgby. And, of course Mr. Mycroft in H.F.Heard’s books and Poirot in his last adventure are no spring chickens.