Writer John Kendall Finds Trouble When He Agrees to Write an Authorized Biography

Writer John Kendall has always specialized in writing non-fiction survival guides, teaching people how to survive in the most rugged and unforgiving circumstances. Now, he has finally written a novel and his agent has sold it to a publisher. However, it will still be months before the book is actually released and begins to earn royalties (assuming it ever does). In the meantime, even living very frugally, Kendall has gone through the advance for the book and is in desperate need of money.

His agent hooks him up with a wealthy horse trainer, Tremayne Vickers, who would like to hire Kendall to write his biography. Kendall agrees to take the job, especially since it includes lodging in Vickers' large home while Kendall interviews Vickers and begins writing the book.

Kendall arrives at the Vickers farm to find a large and very interesting family living in or near Vickers' home. Most all of them are involved in the racing world in one way or another and very quickly Kendall is introduced to it as well. Some of the family members are very welcoming and nice; a couple of them are jerks, and the family has suffered a recent blow when one of the family members has been convicted of manslaughter. He somehow accidentally strangled a young woman at a party, but apparently in this jurisdiction, the crime is not enough to merit a term in prison because the guy is still footloose and fancy free and generally being a pain in the butt, especially to Kendall.

It soon turns out that another young woman associated with the farm--a trainer--has also been strangled to death and then buried in the woods nearby. Once her remains are discovered, the police will be looking closely at the Vickers family to see if there is a link between the two crimes. Inevitably, poor John Kendall will get caught up in the mess and will almost certainly need all of those survival skills he's been writing about if he's going to survive.

Kendall is a typical Dick Francis hero--bright, resilient, strong, pleasant, and a man that others almost always underestimate. This book is a bit unusual in that, unlike virtually all other Dick Francis novels, the hero has no love interest. There are a number of attractive women about, but they are all taken and so there is no one to whom Kendall might turn.

The book is fine and it's a quick read. I'm giving it three stars rather than four because it falls short of most other Francis novels in the quality of the villain. There clearly is a villain lurking here, but he's not nearly as mean, nasty, dangerous, degenerate, or threatening as most of the others that Francis has created, and the book suffers a bit as a result.

Perry Mason Must Solve a Convoluted Case Involving a Careless Kitten

Not to be confused with The Case of the Caretaker's Cat, this is the twenty-first entry in the Perry Mason series, first published in 1942. As the book opens a young woman named Helen Kendal receives a mysterious phone call from a man claiming to be her beloved uncle, Franklin Shore, who disappeared ten years earlier. Shore, a prosperous banker, simply disappeared from his desk one night while in the middle of writing a check, and hasn't been seen or heard from since, save for a postcard that he sent to young Helen from Florida.

Uncle Franklin's wife, a grizzled old battle axe named Matilda, claims that Franklin ran off with a younger woman and that she's hated him ever since. She refuses to divorce him and insists that one day he will come crawling back to her and she will gleefully take her revenge. In the meantime, she also refuses to petition the court to declare him dead so that his will can be probated. This means that poor young Helen, who's in line for $20,000 in the will, can't afford to kiss off Aunt Matilda and marry the soldier that she loves.

The man claiming to be Uncle Franklin wants Helen to contact Perry Mason and bring him to meet a man who will then lead the two of them to him. It's all very mysterious and hush-hush, and Mason, who loves a good mystery, naturally agrees. In fairly short order, someone will be murdered; Helen's poor little cat will be poisoned, and Helen's miserable Aunt Matilda will also apparently be poisoned. Nobody cares about Aunt Matilda, of course, but we're all rooting for the poor little kitten to make a speedy and full recovery.

The plot of this novel is even more convoluted than usual for these books. Naturally, Perry will get into deep trouble and the nasty D.A., Hamilton Burger, will gleefully insist that this time he has Perry dead to rights and will be sending him to jail. Readers will dislike Burger even more than they dislike Aunt Matilda and will be thrilled to see Perry throttle the D.A. again. (This gives nothing away. If anyone reads one of these books expecting that Mason might actually lose a case, then they are clearly reading the wrong series.)

The solution to this all these developments will leave any logical reader shaking his or her head at the tangled web that Gardner has woven here and at the way he tries to make some sense out of it at the end. It simply can't be done, but still, it's always fun to watch Perry in action, and this is a quick, entertaining read.

Boston P.I. Spenser Searches for Some OLD BLACK MAGIC in This Novel from Ace Atkins

This is another very entertaining Spenser novel, written by Ace Atkins who took over the series following the death of Robert B. Parker. This is the seventh of the novels that Atkins has written, and he long ago established his bona fides as the right person to take over from the master. It's not an exaggeration to say that the series now belongs to him almost as much as it does to Parker.

This story is based on an actual art theft that occurred in Boston in 1990, and as the book opens, Spenser is asked to help recover a hugely valuable painting The Gentleman in Black, by the Spanish master, El Greco, which was stolen twenty years earlier from the Winthrop Museum. The request comes from another detective, an old friend named Locke. Locke has been pursuing the painting practically since its theft, but now Locke is dying and wants Spenser to take over the quest.

New evidence has recently come to light that the painting may still be in the Boston area, and the Winthrop is offering a five million dollar reward for its safe return. But Spenser doesn't agree to take the case for the reward; he's doing it for an old friend.

The people at the museum are generally priggish pains in the butt, and they blow hot and cold on Spenser's efforts to find their missing painting. They're more a hindrance than a help, but still, of course, he perseveres. His sidekick, Hawk, is out of town, and Sixkill has moved to California, so Spenser will turn to an old criminal acquaintance, Vinnie Morris, to serve as his backup this time around.

The quest will take Spenser through a maze of the Boston underworld, with a short side trip to the King's hometown of Memphis. There's a lot of double-crossing and dirty dealing, and Spenser has no idea who he can really trust, save for Morris who has his own reason for joining the crusade.

Through it all, Spenser remains the tough, wise-cracking P.I. that readers of the series have come to love and, as an added bonus, we see very little of Spenser's girlfriend, Susan Silverman, in this novel.There's hardly any of the smarmy, nausea-inducing interplay between the two that disrupts so many of the books in this series, and for that, this reader is especially grateful. An extra half of a star just for that.

Philip Marlowe Reaches the End of the Road in PLAYBACK

Published in 1958, Playback is the seventh and last of the full-length Philip Marlowe novels written by Raymond Chandler. It appeared five years after The Long Goodbye, which was the sixth book in the series and which many would argue is the best book of them all. Playback is a fairly good read, but sadly, it's not on a par with many of the others in the series.

Although released five years later, the events in the novel occur about a year and a half after the end of The Long Goodbye. A lawyer named Clyde Umney, acting on instructions from a law firm in Washington, D.C., hires Marlowe to meet a train when it arrives in L.A. and to shadow a passenger from the train, a woman named Betty Mayfield who is traveling under an assumed name. Once Mayfield settles in somewhere, Marlowe is supposed to report back. Umney is unable or unwilling to explain why the client wants Mayfield followed.

Marlowe trails the young woman to Esmeralda, a small resort town, and manages to take the room next to her in a hotel. He discovers that an apparent blackmailer has some sort of hold on Mayfield. He also learns that another P.I., a piece of rough work from Kansas City, is also on Betty's trail. It seems clear that the young woman is in desperate need of a friend, even though she blows hot and cold on Marlowe's efforts to be of assistance. When Umney can't or won't give Marlowe a satisfactory explanation for his assignment, Marlowe returns his retainer and, forsaking his obligation to his client, tries to protect the young woman from the forces that are arrayed against her.

This is a relatively brief novel that Chandler adapted from a screenplay that he was unable to sell. There's not much of a mystery involved, and Marlowe is not quite as witty and philosophical as he was in the earlier novels. Still it's fun to watch him in action, and it's sad to ring down the curtain on what remains one of the best and most influential series in the history of crime fiction. 3.5 stars, rounded up just because it's Raymond Chandler.

A Seductive Young Woman Winds Up Pretty Dead in This Thriller from Gerry Boyle

This is another very entertaining entry in this series, featuring reporter Jack McMorrow. McMorrow is a stringer for the New York Times, even though he lives way off the grid in the woods near Prosperity, Maine. But Jack stumbles into a potentially explosive story when his girlfriend, Roxanne, a social worker, is sent to investigate a case of possible child abuse involving a very wealthy and prominent Boston family.

A church worker reports that the child, a little girl, has complained of being locked in a dark closet as punishment and there is bruising on the child's shoulders. Jack drives Roxanne to the couple's vacation mansion in Blue Harbor and waits outside while Roxanne goes in to interview the child and her mother. While Jack is waiting, he is discovered by the child's father, the wealthy and very personable David Connelly.

Connelly invites Jack into the house and before long, both Jack and Roxanne appear to have fallen under the spell of the Connellys. The mother, Maddie, blames the child's abuse on a nanny who has been fired and sent packing. Roxanne will have to chase down the nanny to hear her side of the story, but both she and Jack find the Connellys charming and believable.

The Connellys invite Jack and Roxanne to a party at their luxurious home. One of the other guests is an attractive and very seductive young woman named Angel Moretti. Angel works for the charitable foundation that the Connellys run and seems to have a strange power over the men who work there, David Connelly included.

Shortly thereafter, a body is discovered in the woods not far from Jack's home. As a reporter, he naturally senses a story and goes to the scene. He's shocked when he sees that the victim is Angel Moretti, and her death puts Jack in a very difficult position. As a reporter, he feels obligated to follow the story wherever it leads, but as a new friend of the Connellys, he's reluctant to draw them into what would certainly become a major scandal. As he tries to walk the fine line between his duty to his job and his obligations to his new friends, some seriously dangerous people will attempt to turn him away from the story and Jack will soon discover that he's head over heels in trouble and that he may be dragging Roxanne right along with him.

The books in this series just seem to keep getting better with each new entry. Again, Boyle has written a gripping story that will keep readers on the edge of their seats, right up to the powerful climax. An easy four stars.