A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review
by Robert J. Randisi & Marcia Muller

   

WARWICK DOWNING – The Player. Joe Reddman #1. Saturday Review Press, hardcover, 1974. No paperback edition.

   ‘The Player” is Denver private investigator Joe Reddman. He was given his Cheyenne name, Nataq, nha-ewo-tsimtisi,” by Bluetree Woman, the Indian who raised him. It means “Man Who Plays Garne” — and Reddman plays his particular game very well.

   In this first recorded case, Reddman is hired by a man named Aaron Cane to clear his nephew, a rookie cop named Denny McLoughlen, of a murder charge. At the same time, he takes on another job — to look into a two-year-old, $450,000 bank robbery involving an armored car that was decked out as a stagecoach. He soon discovers the two cases are connected, but before he can uncover exactly how and why, Denny McLoughlen is murdered. That, plus his growing involvement with Denny’s girlfriend, complicates his efforts, and more murder and mayhem lead up to an action-packed climax.

   Downing’s grasp of Denver’s history recalls a rough-and-tumble past that is coated with only a thin veneer of elegance. and the Rocky Mountain scenery is used to exceptionally good effect. Joe Reddman is an interesting character, a man of great integrity, and it is a shame that he has appeared as the main character in only one other novel — intriguingly titled The Gambler, the Minstrel, and the Dance Hall Queen (1976), in which an old legend from the mining camps on the south slope of Pike’s Peak seems to be repeating itself in present times. He also has a cameo appearance in The Mountains West of Town (1975), which features lawyer Nathan Tree.

   These three novels comprise Downing’s entire contribution to crime fiction. One hopes that others will be forthcoming.

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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
   

Bibliographic Update: There were no further adventures of Joe Reddman, but Warwick Downing did publish six later novels which appear to be genre work, either westerns or mystery/suspense titles.