A Photojournalist Finds Himself in Big Trouble Out in Sunny Arizona

The protagonist of this dark, hard boiled novel is a guy known simply as Macky who works for a newspaper in Tucson, Arizona. Macky is a photojournalist who specializes in exposing corruption and he'll do basically whatever it takes to get the story he's looking for.

Fresh off a story exposing corruption in the mining industry, Macky gets a call from a mysterious woman who wants him to investigate a local dog fighting ring and, in the process, take down a powerful, sanctimonious, hypocritical judge. Macky agrees to do so and thereby makes the classic mistake that every protagonist always seems to make in a novel like this by getting involved with The Wrong Woman.

In this case, the woman is Alice Malone. She's in an abusive relationship with the aforementioned judge and basically wants Macky to rescue her and give the judge his just desserts. Naturally, Alice is damaged goods, and, of course, she's also extremely sexy and very nasty. In short, there's no way Macky will be able to resist her and once they've met, you know that the poor boy is in for a very rocky ride.

Arizona Kiss is a sleazy, gritty tale--like a twenty car pile up that's taking place right in front of your eyes that you can't look away from. Ring's writing is raw and visceral, and his descriptions of Arizona will not have endeared him to the State Tourism Board. The plot moves at a brisk pace, descending as it must, into an inevitable sort of hell, and the book should appeal to any reader who likes hard boiled crime novels. It may be hard to find, but the search is well worth it. Thanks to my GR friend Jeffrey Keeten for alerting me to it.

At one time or another, I've read all of the novels written by Dick Francis, and I'm now working my way through them again in order and reviewing them here. I'm sorry to say that Hot Money did not work for me at all.

A Dick Francis novel usually follows a fairly definite pattern: The protagonist is a single male, almost always associated in some way or other with the world of horse racing. He's almost always single, although there may be a woman working her way into his life. He's usually quiet, but tough, smart and very resourceful. People almost always underestimate him. In most cases he's up against a tough, ruthless, vicious villain who almost always remains in the background until the end of the book. Usually, the protagonist will have to be severely tested, often through a gruesome physical ordeal, before he triumphs over his adversary and order is restored.

In this case, though, Francis departs from the formula and, to my mind, both the story and the reader suffer as a result. The protagonist is Ian Pembroke, an amateur jockey who somewhat resembles the usual Francis hero. He's the son of a very wealthy metals investor named Malcolm Pembroke. The elder Pembroke has been married five times and has produced nine children. All of them, save for Ian, appear to be severely maladjusted, as are the people to whom they are married.

Ian is unmarried and has no woman in his life, save for a married woman with whom he has an occasional tryst. There may be psychological issues involved here, but then it would seem that everyone in this novel could benefit from a few hours spent on the couch of a capable analyst. Ian and his father haven't spoken in three years. Ian made a critical comment about his father's latest wife and Malcolm punched him, breaking his nose and severing the relationship.

Now, someone has murdered the wife and is attempting to kill Malcolm, so Malcolm turns to Ian for help. (Naturally, his father has now realized that Ian was correct in his assessment of the woman's character.) For whatever reason, Ian still loves his father and is the only one of his children who is not grasping after the old man's money. He will spend the rest of the novel moving Malcolm around, trying to keep him out of harm's while he figures out who's attempting to kill him.

In this case though, it's no shadowy, malevolent figure. It seems clear from the beginning that the villain is someone in Malcolm's own family. Although he has settled trusts on all of his adult children, they are, for the most part, irresponsible, not very capable, greedy, grasping, ungrateful slobs, desperate for more money from their father. They all seem to hate Ian, believing for some inexplicable reason that he is their father's favorite and that he's attempting to cut them out of the will.

My problem with this book is that all of the characters seemed particularly unattractive and unappealing. Apart from Ian and Malcolm, I disliked all of them intensely and so really didn't care what happened to them. Ian was okay, but not nearly as appealing as most Francis protagonists. There was very little tension in the novel and very little suspense. Even though someone was apparently attempting to kill Malcolm and maybe even Ian, I was never really worried about them, and when the whole business was finally resolved I found the conclusion to be laughably absurd and unbelievable.

Anyone who writes as many books as Dick Francis did is bound to produce a clunker or two now and then and IMHO, that's the case here. That said, I realise that I am out of step with most of the other people who have reviewed this book here. I'm glad it worked for them, but a generous two and a half stars for me, rounded up, knowing that the next Dick Francis novel I read is bound to be better than this one.

San Francisco Attorney Dismas Hardy Takes on a Complicated Case in This Novel from John Lescroart

This is a fairly decent entry in John Lescroart's long-running series featuring San Francisco defense attorney Dismas Hardy and the cast of characters that has grown up around him through the years. Hardy has aged through the books, and is recovering from a couple of gunshot wounds that he suffered on his last case. He's contemplating retirement but then a former client, Abby Jarvis, is charged with poisoning her boss, Grant Wagner, the owner of a successful family business. Dismas feels compelled to take Abby's case, at least initially, even though the cops and the D.A. seem to think that they have an iron-clad case against her.

The early books in this series are among my favorite legal thrillers of all. They are smart, witty, and hugely suspenseful. This book, though, is much more of a police procedural and there are relatively few courtroom scenes. The plot at once seems both thin and convoluted and didn't have the sense of urgency that so many of the earlier books did. And, I confess, I'm growing a bit tired of Hardy's children who are now young adults and who seem to keep blundering into these novels in ways that don't make a lot of sense to me. Hardy's wife, Frannie, is also something of a pain in this outing.

Hardy will persevere and attempt to sort through all the complicated issues that this case presents, while at the same time attempting to deal with the family drama that results. I enjoyed the book, but couldn't help comparing it to the earlier books in the series that got my blood pumping a lot more than this one did.

Introducing Bernie Rhodenbarr, Gentleman Burglar

This is the first book in Lawrence Block's "Burglar" series featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr. Block is perhaps best known for his Matthew Scudder series which is often dark, violent, and humorless. Like the Scudder series, the Bernie books are also set in New York City; otherwise they're the polar opposite of the Scudders. They're light, not at all violent, and often hilariously funny. The fact that the two series could be written by the same author is simply another testament to the skill of Lawrence Block (not that he needs any further testament in this regard.)

Bernie is a gentleman in the truest sense. He only burgles places that he expects to be empty and he would never commit any act of physical violence against his victims. He generally chooses well-heeled targets who can afford the losses. He's an expert at picking locks, and is one of the few in his profession who can defeat the top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art Rabson lock which rich people often choose as their principle line of defense against burglary. He never makes a mess, and leaves the places he burgles exactly as he found them, save for the items he's taken with him.

Bernie only does a few jobs a year, which allows him to live comfortably. But in almost every recorded adventure, Bernie stumbles across a body. The cops discover the body, occasionally with Bernie still on the premises, and immediately assume that he is the killer. Bernie then must use all his skills and intelligence to get himself off the hook and point the police at the Real Killer. He's a very charming and appealing protagonist--just the sort of guy that a crime fiction fan would love to spend an evening with every once in a while.

In this case, Bernie takes a job for hire. Someone offers him $5,000 (still a considerable sum of money when the book first appeared in 1977) to break into an apartment and steal a small blue box. Bernie has no idea what might be in the box, only that it's supposed to be in an antique roll-top desk. The man who lives in the apartment is supposed to be out at the theatre for the evening.

Bernie gets into the apartment without any difficulty and goes directly to the desk. He opens that without a problem either, but the box is nowhere in sight. While Bernie is still standing there, pondering the situation, two cops arrive at the door. Someone has reported hearing a noise in the apartment and they've arrived to investigate.

Of course, Bernie is mystified. He hasn't made a sound since he arrived but, nonetheless he's in deep trouble. Fortunately, one of the cops recognizes Bernie and when Bernie offers them a quick thousand dollars, they agree to let him go and pretend they never saw him. But then one of the cops goes to use the john and discovers a dead body in the bedroom. Suddenly the entire picture has changed and before the cops can react, Bernie rushes out the door and goes into hiding. A city-wide manhunt is soon on, with Bernie's picture splashed across the pages of all the papers, identifying him as a cold-blooded murderer. With that, the race is on and Bernie will have to work fast and furiously to get out of this mess.

I've really enjoyed all the books in the series, along with everything else that Block has ever written. I reread this book this week for one of my book clubs and really enjoyed Bernie's origin story all over again. Now I just have to somehow find the time to go back and reread a lot more of them.

HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY WERE Is Another Brilliant Novel from Boston Teran

I’m always tremendously excited whenever I get my hands on a new novel by Boston Teran. I first fell in love with the author’s work several years ago when one of my book clubs picked The Creed of Violence as our monthly selection. The book was a revelation—intelligent and beautifully written with a compelling plot and unforgettable characters.

I quickly discovered that the same could be said of any of Teran’s other novels, and that continues to be the case with the author’s latest book, How Beautiful They Were. This novel completes Teran’s “The Defiant American Series,” which began with The Cloud and the Fire and A Child Went Forth.

The three novels are set in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, when the United States was still being formed and when the future of the nation could have realistically taken any number of turns. The books are not chronological in order, but together they paint a wonderful portrait of the forces shaping the nation at that time and raise several critically important questions about the country’s past, present and future.

This latest novel is set in the world of the theater and begins in London where an actor named John James Beaufort is forced to flee the country for reasons that I won’t give away. Like so many others of his day, he makes his way to New York and there attempts to reinvent himself as an actor named Nathaniel Luck.

With a disfigured playwright named Robert Harrison, Luck forms Colonel Tearwood’s American Theatre Company. The two assemble a company of actors and begin searching for audiences. In particular, they hope to write and produce plays that will speak to the everyday lives of the working-class people who are their principal audience. The enterprise enjoys some success, but the company and the individual actors, Luck in particular, are soon confronted by the brutal realities of the American economy and society of the day and by the secrets that they all carry with them.

It’s impossible to do justice to a book this good. The characters are so finely drawn that the reader cannot help but become caught up in the ebb and flow of their lives. You share the joy of their triumphs and your heart breaks when tragedy overwhelms them. This is a very wise book with much to say about the theater and the world beyond it. Indeed, all the world is a stage, and this book is as beautiful and will be as enduring as the characters who inhabit it. Five stars are not nearly enough.

Reporter Jack McMorrow Finds Big Trouble in a Small Town

Freelance reporter Jack McMorrow is minding his own business, doing an article for a travel magazine about Benedict Arnold's ill-fated expedition against Quebec in 1775, when he stumbles onto a minor mystery in the small town of Scanesett, Maine. A man on a bus tour headed for Quebec has failed to return to the bus which has stopped briefly in the small town. The bus driver waits as long as he can before heading off down the road, leaving the missing man, P. Ray Mantis, behind.

The local police chief, a small-minded man who hates reporters, seems totally unconcerned about the fact that a man has gone missing in his community. But Jack sees a potential story that he might be able to sell, perhaps to the Boston Globe, and so in and around his research about Benedict Arnold's expedition, he begins a search for the missing Mantis.

Jack's investigation gets him tangled up with a mentally-challenged brother and sister who may have briefly hidden Mantis in their ramshackle home. The two seem to think that both Mantis and Jack McMorrow are somehow connected to the CIA, and this mistaken impression leads a trio of violent low-lifes to take after McMorrow.

Jack's life is already complicated at the moment because his girlfriend, Roxanne, is down in Florida, attending to her ailing mother and is having a bad time of it. Jack's normally reliable neighbor, Claire Varney is also down south with his wife, recovering from surgery, and so Jack is left entirely alone.

As the book progresses, Jack alternates between doing the research for his article on Benedict Arnold and his hunt for the missing Mantis. As usually happens when Jack relentlessly pursues an investigation like this, he's ultimately going to find himself in big trouble and will need all of his skills if he's going to escape it. Another good addition to an excellent regional mystery series.

ATLANTA DEATHWATCH Is Classic Hardboiled Crime Fiction At Its Best

This is old-fashioned crime fiction in the best sense of the term. Originally published in 1974, the first novel in the Hardman series is a lean, gritty, hardboiled novel that would have been perfectly at home on the spinning racks of men's adventure novels that populated the nation's drug and book stores back in the day.

Jim Hardman is an ex-Atlanta cop who was railroaded off the force on trumped up corruption charges. He now works as an unlicensed P.I. Hardman, who is white, has an African American partner named Hump. Hump played for a time in the NFL and provides the muscle and intimidation where needed. He's also Hardman's guide into the city's African-American neighborhoods.

As the novel opens, a businessman named Arch Campbell has hired Hardman to trail his daughter, Emily, and see how she's spending her time. Emily attends a local college and has been an outstanding student until recently when her grades and her attendance have begun to slide. It seems like a simple task, and Hardman trails the young woman to a seedy bar on the black side of town. But while he's watching Emily, two thugs jump him, beat him up badly, and warn him off the case.

Hardman agrees to drop the case, telling Emily's father that he's not getting paid enough to absorb that kind of punishment. But then Emily is murdered and it turns out that she's been dating a black crime boss known as The Man. The Man now summons Hardman and hires him to find Emily's killer. With Hump at his side, the two work and fight their way through Atlanta's dark underbelly, following the trail of a brutal crime that's not nearly as simple as it might appear on the surface.

This is a quick and entertaining read with lots of action and violence, and it will appeal to those readers who enjoy classic hardboiled novels. Be forewarned, however: this book reflects the language and cultural and sexual attitudes of the early 1970's. It's not remotely politically correct.