Fri 22 Apr 2022
PI Stories I’m Reading: HENRY KANE “The Memory Guy.â€
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading1 Comment
HENRY KANE “The Memory Guy.†PI Peter Chambers. First published in Come Seven, Come Death, edited by Henry Morrison (Pocket, paperback original, 1965). Reprinted in Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine (US), March 1966.
In “The Memory Guy†Peter Chambers is hired to do one thing – find who’s been leaving an aspiring Broadway actress phone calls threatening her father’s life – and ends up doing another. To wit: saving her from being accused of killing him. It seems that he was doing his best to keep her from her desired choice of career, including the rather drastic measure of persuading her to marry his law clerk, a man with a photographic memory.
Hence the title.
If you were to read the blurb for this particular story on the back cover, it gives the entire plot away, so don’t. As a pure detective story, it’s too short to linger in your memory for very long afterward, but it’s very well constructed.
What I found disappointing, is that there’s nothing of Peter Chambers himself in the story. The Personality he’s developed in earlier stories doesn’t exist in this one. The PI the girl hires could have been anyone. In fact, he needn’t even be a detective, just someone she knows who’s a little more observant than a stranger off the street.
April 22nd, 2022 at 9:20 pm
Much as I like Kane and Chambers I have to admit he can be a bit uneven. You are never quite sure which combination of the two you are getting.