Tue 21 Jan 2025
A 1001 Midnights Review: JACK FOXX – Freebooty.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[4] Comments
by Marcia Muller
JACK FOXX – Freebooty. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1976.
Jack Foxx is a pseudonym used by Bill Pronzini for four Foxx novels written in the 1970s. Two are action/ adventure stories featuring Singapore bush pilot Dan Connell — The Jade Figurine (1972) and Dead Run (1975); a third, Wildfire ( 1978), is a thriller about a small California logging community menaced by both a trio of dangerous criminals and a forest fire.
Freebooty, a historical mystery, is very different in tone from the other tautly written, action-oriented Foxx novels. This is not to say that there isn’t plenty of action and suspense, but Freebooty‘s style is gentler, evoking an earlier age, and it is spiced with frequent, delightful humor.
Fergus O’Hara and his wife, Hattie, arrive in San Francisco in 1863 en route to the port city of Stockton, where they suspect the members of a bandit gang who have been terrorizing coaches of the Adams Express Company are hiding out. As O’Hara explains, his wife is not an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, as he is, but frequently assists him in his inquiries, “women being able to obtain information in places men cannot.”
Before the O’Haras board the steamer Freebooty for the inland Journey, Fergus makes the acquaintance of Horace T. Goatleg, an obese man with patently suspicious motives; encounters an articulate and ribald parrot (one of the most memorable characters in a cast of outstanding ones); witnesses a near-riot on the Barbary Coast; finds a murdered man in an alley; and sustains minor injuries himself, including being half drowned by a shower of beer.
Needless to say, all of the above events tie in to further goings–on aboard the steamer. And as the O’Haras — an effective team –investigate them, their initial purposes take a series of twists and turns, leading to a final revelation that is sure to leave the reader both surprised and amused.
Pronzini has a firm grasp of historical fact, and he blends it skillfully into his narrative, capturing the tenor of the times without allowing detail to slow the pace of his story. This is an entertaining novel, well plotted and full of engaging characters.
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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.
January 22nd, 2025 at 1:39 pm
These historically-inventive authors are amazing to me. Imagine expending such painstaking, meticulous labor on such a project.
Not even being sure if it will sell!
I hope they are well-rewarded for their work.
January 22nd, 2025 at 2:34 pm
I really have no idea how much Mr. Pronzini got paid for writing this book. I suspect it may have been minimal and I agree. I wish it had been more.
January 25th, 2025 at 1:23 am
I recall grabbing it up when I saw it in the bookstore and being disappointed there was no immediate sequel.
January 25th, 2025 at 11:12 am
I was a long time in getting my hands on this one. I could easily be wrong, but I don’t think it ever came out in paperback, at least early on. I don’t recall when it was that it was known that “Jack Foxx” was also Bill Pronzini, but by the time I read this one, it most certainly was.