Tue 24 May 2022
ROB LEININGER – January Cold Kill. Gabrielle Johns #1. CreateSpace, softcover, 2014. Also available on Kindle.
Who knew that it snows all the time in Reno in January? Two to three inches at a time. Maybe more. It doesn’t interfere in any way with Gabbi’s latest case, though; it only provides an interesting backdrop to it, which involves an old school friend, Ashley Dinsmore, who’s being stalked in a very unusual way.
To wit: he has pictures of her in a, shall we say, a very compromising way. What he wants, though, is not at all clear. Blackmail? Not a hint of it. Instead, he calls her on the phone and more, follows her around everywhere she goes, and all the while declaring his undying love for her.
Gabbi herself is as much a part of the story as the puzzle itself. She is a statuesque blonde former showgirl who for a while was an assistant to her former father-in-law who is a PI (her name is still on the door). But even though while doing so she discovered a knack of picking locks, she is now a professional gambler and doing quite well at it. She can’t turn down an old school friend, though, especially with such a strange case to work on.
Gabbi tells her own story, and quite wittily too. From the 77% point on my Kindle:
The story zips along in fine fashion, with Gabbi using a small crew of geriatric friends to come along whenever she needs backup. Until the end, that is, that takes ever so long to tie up what ends up being a very complicated case, as told by the killer who has to go into considerable detail to explain everything. I think if I were a killer, and I had the detective who is onto me all trussed up with duck tape, I’d just add her to my list of victims, right then and there.
I’d still read another of Gabbi’s adventures, though — there are, after all, eleven months yet to go — but for reasons not known to me, there never was another one.
May 25th, 2022 at 3:12 pm
I’d hoped to write a series with all twelve months, but no agent would take on this novel, so I wrote another series: the GUMSHOE novels, starting with the first in the series, GUMSHOE, which was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best PI Novel of 2016. Now there are seven Gumshoe novels.
May 25th, 2022 at 3:36 pm
A synopsis of the first “Gumshoe” book is as follows:
“For nine long days, the mayor and district attorney of Reno, Nevada, have been missing. Their vehicles were found parked side-by-side at Reno-Tahoe International airport. Did they fly somewhere together? They aren’t on any flight manifests. Did the two of them take off with a big pile of the city’s money? If so, city accountants can’t find it. Were they murdered? There’s no sign of foul play. Enter Mort Angel, 41, who quit a thankless job as an IRS agent. Mort is Reno’s newest gumshoe. four hours into his new career, Mort finds the missing mayor—dead, in the trunk of his ex-wife’s Mercedes. Did Mort kill the mayor? Did Mort’s ex? A news-hungry nation wants to know. As events begin to spin out of control, Mort realizes things have been out of control since the night before he started his new career, the night he found the unknown naked blonde asleep in his bed . . .”
And here’s a list of all seven (so far). Worth a try, I think:
The Mortimer Angel series —
1. Gumshoe (2014)
2. Gumshoe for Two (2017)
3. Gumshoe on the Loose (2017)
4. Gumshoe Rock (2017)
5. Gumshoe in the Dark (2021)
6. Gumshoe Gone (2021)
7. Gumshoe Outlaw (2022)