All posts by BJBourg

Review: SHADOW BOYS (A JON CANTRELL THRILLER BOOK TWO) by Harry Hunsicker

Kevin R. Tipple, Reviews

Author Harry Hunsicker spins tales of Dallas that don’t fit the glitzy image advocated by the Chamber of Commerce. His Dallas is one of dope dens, backstabbing in the barrios as well as city hall, a river and a roadway system that was deliberately constructed to divide the rich and poor, where the ends justify the means in you are on the winning side of the deal. Where the streets are paved with broken dreams amidst the cracked asphalt and where babies are born with no hope and no chance to get out. This view was part of the backbone of his very good Lee Henry Oswald Mystery Series (begin with Still River) and is also present in the Jon Cantrell Thriller Series. The second book in the series, Shadow Boys, picks up a few months after, The Contractors and leads readers on a history lesson while dealing with a violence fueled here and now though not all of the violence comes by way a weapon.

When he isn’t messing with the tourists at the Grassy Knoll by tossing around empty rifle cartridges, Jon Cantrell works for a law firm out of Washington, D. C. He is paid well to discreetly handle situations that arise when government shipments of important cargo are not returned or fall into the wrong hands. While the law firm prefers that he not moonlight, in this case, his boss has granted Jon Cantrell permission to meet with someone that they would like to have a relationship with going forward.

That someone is Deputy Chief Raul Delgado of the Dallas Police Department who is a rising star in the DPD despite, or maybe inspite, of his violent background. The movers and shakers have begun grooming Delgado and offering advice as they believe that he is a person who someday might be sitting in the governor’s mansion down in Austin or occupying a legislative seat in Washington. The same drive that got Delgado to where is now is the same drive that in some ways is preventing him from rising further. While aware of that dichotomy, Delgado is more focused on a mission of a personal nature. Delgado wants a certain 13 year old autistic boy who lives with his elderly grandmother in West Dallas found. The child has been possibly missing for a few days now and the details of his living situation are very sketchy. Delgado can’t use the vast resources of the DPD and needs a man with the proper skills as well as being sufficiently motivated to get the job done. Considering the boy’s name is Tremont Washington Jon Cantrell is most definitely the man on both counts. Not only does he have the skill set, Jon Cantrell owes a debt to Tremont’s father that he can never repay. Cantrell is also seriously annoyed that despite what he had been told by the Texas Department of Public Safety ten years ago the family was never relocated to California and has remained in a very bad situation in West Dallas.

Tremont Washington has to be found. That storyline is the primary storyline for the book which features several other storylines all interconnected in various ways to the primary hunt for the child. Throw in a missing government weapons shipment, an out of control SWAT officer, city politics, and a series of vigilante murders, among other items, and things get very interesting in the Texas heat.

Shadow Boys is a fast moving and intense read that surpasses the first book, The Contractors. Interspaced with the action and the mystery are small flashes of cynical and often sarcastic humor. Violence comes in many forms in this thriller as does political expediency and deceit. As in the first book of the series, there is some hard edged sarcasm about the city along the Trinity River that has no real reason for being other than sheer force of will. While the Chamber of Commerce may hate Hunsicker’s non photo shopped version of Big D, the author showcases yet again that he has a very good understanding of makes the city and its residents tick in various ways. Along the way he delivers a complex thriller that crisscrosses time and space all across the city proving that Shadow Boys is one book to make sure and read.

Book Three in the series is titled THE GRID and was released August, 2015. The book is in my tbr pile and will be read and reviewed soon.

Shadow Boys (A Jon Cantrell Thriller Book 2)
Harry Hunsicker
http://www.harryhunsicker.com
Thomas & Mercer
http://www.apub.com
December 2014
ISBN#: 978-1477825754
Paperback (also available in e-book and audio forms)
384 Pages
$8.99

Material was supplied by the author quite some time ago in exchange for my objective review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2015

Reviews and More http://kevintipplescorner.blogspot.com/

Review: WHEN OLD MEN DIE: A TRUMAN SMITH MYSTERY by Bill Crider

Kevin R. Tipple, Reviews

January on Galveston Island means that one can still go fishing when northern sections of Texas and the United States are experiencing the brutal joys of old man winter. While one can stand on the gulf coast pier and throw a line into the ocean until the pier closes at five that does not mean the fish will cooperate. They certainly aren’t cooperating on this beautiful day when Dino comes out on the pier to talk.

Truman Smith has known Dino for a lot of years. Rarely does he come out and Dino never ventures out over the water even if it by way of a solid pier. Not only did Dino have to pay three bucks to come out onto the pier, he is missing part of his lineup of reality television talk shows that were so prevalent back in the 90’s. Whatever he needs is very important, at least to Dino, through Truman Smith isn’t exactly thrilled with him for a variety of reasons.

He is less thrilled when he hears what drove Dino to actually leave his home. Dino wants to hire Truman Smith and his private investigator skills to find the legendary local guy known as “Outside Harry.” An island fixture the man has been homeless for decades. Outside Harry has been homeless and probably always will be once he is found safe.  It is a lifestyle choice for Outside Harry and one that will make him harder to find than the average person. Dino, who never was a part of the family business when gambling interests ran Galveston Island, has been making use of his contacts and can’t find him. Dino and his wife, Evelyn, want him found simply because he is missing and they are worried something might have happened to him.

“Besides,” Evelyn went on, “if you don’t look for him, nobody will. Nobody cares what happens to an old man like that.” (Page 8)

There is that as Truman is well aware. Dino is willing to pay in terms of cash and sweetens the deal with an unopened box of Tender Vittles for Truman’s cat, “Nameless” so Truman agrees to do a little looking. That search for Outside Henry leads him to a legendary island building, more than one ambush, and plenty more in “When Old Men Die: A Truman Smith Mystery.”

Third in the series following Dead on the Island and Gator Kill the read is a complex tale of mystery and deceit along with a touch of Texas History. Darker in tone than the Sheriff Dan Rhodes Series, the Truman Smith series features a private investigator that is trying to come to terms with his past and the guilt he feels. As such, each book finds him a little further along that path as he slowly copes with recent events. There are the occasional small flashes of humor, but mainly this book and the series in general is more action orientated with serious situations that are more detailed than in some of the author’s other books. This is a very good series that should be read in order due to the numerous events referenced in When Old Men Die: A Truman Smith Mystery. This series, much like the author, does not get the recognition that is well deserved.

When Old Men Die: A Truman Smith Mystery
Bill Crider
http://www.billcrider.com
Walker and Company (subsidiary of Bloomsbury Publishing)
http://www.bloomsbury.com
November 1994
ISBN# 0-8027-3195-3
Hardback
192 Pages (available in audio cassette and e-book versions)
$19.95

Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2015

Reviews and More http://kevintipplescorner.blogspot.com/

Review: THE LAWYER: THE RETRIBUTIONERS by Wayne D. Dundee

Kevin R. Tipple, Reviews

His real name is J. D. Miller. Many know him as “The Lawyer” as a nod to his former profession. These days his courtroom is the land and he is judge, jury, and executioner. He is on a quest to dispense personal justice to those who wronged him so grievously though some do not care for his taking justice into his own hands. That means there are deputies and others looking for him. That sad state of affairs means that his hunt comes with additional risk every time he sets foot into a town.

He had arrived in the north Texas town of Emmett minutes before the explosion at the jail. He had planned a relaxing evening including a good night sleep in an actual bed at the nearby hotel. He was still in the street when the explosion at the jail up the way took out the back wall. Then, a few seconds later, the shooting started.

In the chaos Miller ran to help and opened fire on the outlaws as they rode down the street seconds after they had killed two that wore badges. While managing to stop one of the outlaws from escaping, Miller sustained injuries. Injuries that lead him to need treatment from the local doctor who also happens to be a fountain of information regarding the situation and more in The Lawyer: The Retributioners by Wayne D. Dundee.

Using characters originally created by Edward A. Grainger, author Wayne D. Dundee has created another excellent installment of the series. The Lawyer: The Retributioners touches on the narrow minded racism prevalent at the time and other societal issues while delivering a solidly good western tale. A tale that continues the groundwork laid by Edward A. Grainger this work further expands and continues the series like what has happened with Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles series.

If this series is new to you The Lawyer: The Retributioners can be read first though there are references to events found earlier in the series. For that reason it would be best to start with The Lawyer: Stay Of Execution which includes the original short story, The Lawyer by Edward A. Grainger.

The Lawyer: The Retributioners
Wayne D. Dundee
http://www.fromdundeesdesk.blogspot.com
Beat To A Pulp
http://www.beattoapulp.com
July 2015
ISBN#: 978-1943035076
Paperback (also available in e-book)
114 Pages
$6.50

Material supplied by the publisher in exchange for my objective review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2015

Review: THE MARBLE ORCHARD (1996) by William F. Nolan

Barry Ergang, Reviews

Best known as the author of the science fiction novel Logan’s Run and the screenplay for the film adaptation of same, William F. Nolan is a versatile writer who has worked in several fiction genres and who has written a number of non-fiction works as well. In 1985 he wrote The Black Mask Boys, a book highlighting the stories of eight important writers who helped make Black Mask the most renowned detective pulp magazine of them all. Each story was prefaced with a biographical piece about its author. Nine years later he published The Black Mask Murders, the first novel in a trilogy that stars “The Black Mask Boys”: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner. All three appear in every book, but each is narrated in the first-person by a different writer: The Black Mask Murders by Hammett, Sharks Never Sleep by Gardner, and The Marble Orchard, under consideration here, by Chandler.

The year is 1936, and Raymond Chandler and his wife Cissy are living in the Los Angeles area. Chandler continues to learn and hone his writing craft by turning out stories for Black Mask, the magazine that has also been a home to stories by his friends Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner.

When Chandler answers a phone call from a homicide lieutenant requesting that Cissy come to the morgue to identify a body, he asks who the dead man is and learns it’s Julian Pascal, Cissy’s former husband. His body was found in a Chinese cemetery, and his death appears to have been a ritual suicide. A stunned Chandler tells the detective that he’ll come to the morgue, that he and Julian were friends. Once he confirms the dead man’s identity, Chandler dreads having to tell Cissy. When he breaks the news to her, she vehemently insists that Julian would never kill himself and urges Chandler to look into the matter to find out what really happened.

A mysterious woman in a white limousine appears at Julian’s funeral, a woman later identified as Carmilla Blastok, a now-retired actress whose claim to fame is a series of films that began with The Blood Countess, in which she portrayed a vampire, “a kind of female Lugosi,” as Hammett describes her. She retired after David DuPlaine, the director of all her hit films, was shot to death, ostensibly by a burglar he caught in the act of robbing his house. When Chandler meets with her, he learns she barely knew Julian Pascal, though the latter composed the scores for a couple of her films. She attended his funeral, she tells him, because she hoped to see her much younger sister Elina there. She suspects that Elina once had an inappropriate relationship with Julian.

Elina, who had had a brief acting career herself, has been estranged from Carmilla for three years, having taken up with an abusive former stage actor named Merv Enright. Carmilla begs Chandler to find her sister, just so she can know if the girl is alive and well. When he reminds her that he’s a writer, not a detective, she offers to pay him a thousand dollars, money he can sorely use. Thinking that Elina might be able to enlighten him about Julian and thereby enable him to definitively resolve the question of Julian’s death, he accepts.

And so, enlisting when necessary the assistance of his friends Hammett and Gardner, Chandler’s adventure at “playing detective” begins, plunging him into some situations more appropriate to his fictional sleuths than to a middle-aged former oil company executive turned pulp writer. One of those situations is reminiscent of a similar one in his novel Farewell, My Lovely, as William F. Nolan no doubt playfully intended readers to believe Chandler used his “real life” experience as the basis for Philip Marlowe’s fictional one several years later.

As entertaining a whodunit as The Marble Orchard is, the detective-story portion feels like one of novelette length, the rest a lot of filler. Thus the reader is given scenes involving real-life personalities including William Randolph Hearst, Orson Welles, and Shirley Temple, among others–scenes that do nothing to advance the plot but which serve to fix the story in a particular place and era. The reader is given historical information about a number of locales within the greater Los Angeles area. And there is a secondary story thread involving an African-American man and woman that is clearly meant to depict the racial attitudes of the period but which is wholly irrelevant to the principal plotline. Fortunately, Nolan is a skillful writer with a smart sense of pace, so the filler is equally entertaining and doesn’t disrupt the flow.

Since I first discovered him when I was in my early teens, Raymond Chandler has always been one of my literary heroes. (The Long Goodbye is my all-time-favorite novel.) So enamored of his style was I that, back then, when writing a story, I’d often ask myself, “How would Chandler handle this scene, or this section of narrative, or this exchange of dialogue?” Ultimately I realized that developing my own style and voice, for better or worse, was preferable to imitating another’s. Playing Robert Louis Stevenson’s “sedulous ape” will only get you so far; eventually you have to (and should want to) come into your own. To truly write like someone else requires one to be someone else.

Chandler has had plenty of imitators. I personally think his style was among the most influential of the 20th Century and might very well still be one. Whether they intended to imitate him some of those writers might dispute, but the influence is indisputably there. Three who carried it off well were Howard Browne writing as John Evans (incidentally the name of one of Chandler’s pre-Marlowe pulp-magazine detectives) in his Paul Pine mysteries; Roy Huggins in The Double Take; and Keith Laumer in his purposed homage, Deadfall.

As a former editor of a couple of mystery magazines, one of my biggest pet peeves was the story submission that deliberately tried to imitate Chandler’s–or anyone else’s–distinctive style. Unless the author was writing an obvious spoof or one-time tribute, he or she was virtually guaranteed a rejection. I wanted to publish stories in the authors’ own unique styles.

To his credit–and he touches on the matter in an afterword–Nolan, save for maybe three similes, does not write like Chandler writing a Philip Marlowe novel. That’s because Nolan is not writing a Marlowe novel; he’s writing what is intended as a report from Raymond Chandler about events in which he personally played a role.

All things considered, then, The Marble Orchard is a good, if unexceptional, detective story embedded in a lot of entertaining and informative filler, and populated with a variety of colorful characters.

*****

Postscript: In real life, Chandler and Hammett met exactly once, at a dinner for Black Mask writers. In his biography of Chandler, Tom Hiney writes that Gardner and Chandler were friends, but outside of some correspondence they exchanged, I’ve never read anything that indicates they actually spent time in each other’s presence.

© 2012 Barry Ergang

A Derringer Award-winner, Barry Ergang’s fiction, poetry and non-fiction has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of his work is available at Smashwords and Amazon. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/.