After a peaceful night’s sleep, Nora Hamilton awakens on a bitterly cold and snowy January morning in the Adirondacks to a nightmare. Her husband Brendan, a police officer in the small upstate New York town of Wedeskyull, has committed suicide. Her grief is as incessant as her determination to find out why. He’d given no indication that he was depressed about anything, so what drove him to this desperate act?

Nora’s pursuit of the truth pits her against certain townspeople she thought were her friends; introduces her to strangers who become unlikely allies (readers won’t soon forget Dugger); exposes her subtle conflicts with family members and a not-so-subtle one with her mother-in-law; puts her and others in mortal danger and, literally and symbolically, pits her against the treacherous snow that blankets the region, both concealing and revealing frigid current and decades-old brutal realities and concomitant attitudes.

The trepidations and mysteries in this suspenseful gem will have readers turning pages late into the night to find out what happens next, not least because many a chapter closes with a cliffhanger. Jenny Milchman has crafted an excellent debut novel studded with turns of phrase that add vividity without distracting from the headlong narrative thrust.

The novel is not without what some readers will perceive as flaws. There are unanswered questions about key events, some loose ends are left dangling, and the fates of some of the characters, major and minor, go unexplained. These didn’t bother me personally; not every issue in life has a definitive resolution, and not every question gets answered. I can highly recommend Cover of Snow to fans of high-tension suspense fiction, and in fact recommended it to a number of friends even before I’d finished reading it. I’m looking forward to Jenny Milchman’s next novel.

© 2014 Barry Ergang

Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work can be found at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/.

If you’re a diehard mystery reader, the odds are strong that you’ve read some, if not all, of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels and novelettes. If you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to correct the oversight. They’re classics of the genre, and Wolfe is one of the giants–literally and figuratively–among fictional private sleuths.

Because of his stature and enduring popularity, Wolfe inevitably became the subject of parodies, pastiches, and homages. After Rex Stout died, Robert Goldsborough received permission to continue the series and wrote seven new novels. Lawrence Block paid tribute to Stout in some of his Chip Harrison novels and short stories. What I didn’t know until just recently, after I had a look at The Wolfe Pack website, is how many others have written Wolfe-like stories and novels.

The most recent member of this club is Dave Zeltserman, whose 21^st Century high-tech approach to Wolfean detection began with the novelette “Julius Katz,” which was published in the September/October 2009 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and subsequently won the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America and the Derringer Award for best novelette from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. He followed that with the short story “Archie’s Been Framed” in the September/October 2010 issue of EQMM. The story later took first place in the Ellery Queen’s Readers Choice Awards. And now Zeltserman has brought out the first full-length Julius Katz novel, the e-book Julius Katz and Archie.

Apart from each having the first name of a Roman emperor and an animalistic surname, apart from the fact that both are inherently lazy and only inclined to work when they need money to support lifestyles that include expensive passions, Nero Wolfe and Julius Katz have any number of other similarities. But they also have many striking differences. I considered enumerating both here, then rejected the idea on the grounds that readers familiar with Wolfe should have the pleasure of making the discoveries on their own. (I‘ll even refrain from giving in to the urge to shout “O pioneer, Zeltserman!” with regard to the naming of a particular character and leave readers of this review to figure out to whom and what I refer.) There is, however, one similarity it’s imperative to mention.

Archie.

Nero Wolfe’s cases are narrated by his general factotum, the redoubtable Archie Goodwin, and Julius Katz has Archie Smith. Archie Goodwin is a licensed private detective in his own right, operates as Wolfe’s principal legman, and handles secretarial and accounting chores. Archie Smith is…well, that is, he’s…–Oh, hell! Archie Smith is as unique a narrator as any you’ll find in all of detective fiction, and possibly any other kind of fiction, and that’s all I’ll say on the matter lest I spoil the surprise.

Julius Katz and Archie opens with mystery writer Kenneth J. Kingston trying to hire Julius for ten thousand dollars “for no more than four hours work.” A former bestseller whose sales have been declining over his last several releases, he has a list of six people who, he claims, want to kill him. He also has a new book coming out, which he explains is being treated with extreme secrecy until it‘s actually released. When Julius accuses Kingston of wanting to engage him strictly for the sake of publicity, Kingston replies: “Bingo! That’s why you’re the world-class genius detective. So all I want from you is to spend an hour, two hours at the most, interrogating them as a group. Make it look real. They’ll all think it is. I’ll have a TV crew present. Then in two weeks, after the buzz and media attention has been building, bring everyone back for another round of questioning. This time when you’re done, act as if you’re stumped, and I’ll jump in and name the guilty party. It will be a brilliant piece of publicity that will get the public hot for my book.”

Julius initially turns down Kingston’s offer, which the writer then raises to twenty-five-thousand dollars. When Kingston subsequently shows up on his doorstep with a bottle of a ’78 Montrachet and the reluctant willingness to pay him the money, too, Julius the wine connoisseur can’t refuse.

Thus, the following afternoon, the six people on Kingston’s list are invited to, and show up at, the office in Julius’s Boston townhouse. They are Kingston’s wife, his agent, his editor, his former writing partner, a book critic, and a private detective on whom Kingston’s fictional hero is based. Kingston is supposed to arrive half an hour after the others do, but he doesn’t. It’s subsequently discovered that he was shot to death in his home hours earlier.

Despite Archie’s prodding and pestering, Julius wants no part of the murder investigation. But after a poker game where he outmaneuvers a card cheat hired by shadowy arch-enemy Desmond Grushnier, and then tangles with the cheat and a couple of other thugs, someone takes several shots at him outside his townhouse. Angry, and certain that the shooter is one of the six people Kingston suspected, Julius promises an irate homicide detective that he will expose the murderer by midnight. Experienced mystery readers will probably have no difficulty in identifying the culprit, but that doesn’t matter because the fun is in the ride.

I have but a minor nit to pick with Julius Katz and Archie, and that is Archie’s tendency to harp repetitively and at length on certain aspects of Julius’s behavior. Fortunately, Dave Zeltserman’s easy, breezy prose style compensates so it doesn’t become too tedious. Otherwise, this is a nicely-paced, fairly-clued whodunit from a skilled writer best known to date for some very hardboiled and noir novels and short stories who is clearly having fun with, and versatile enough to pull off, the formal detective story.

At the beginning of this review I suggested that readers unfamiliar with Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels should read some to appreciate what Zeltserman has done with his own creation. I stand by that, but I hasten to assure readers that they needn’t know the Wolfe corpus to enjoy the Julius Katz stories. Julius Katz and Archie can stand on its own as an entertaining and very contemporary detective novel.

© 2011 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/.

I might as well say this right at the beginning: Unfaithful Servant is one of the best hardboiled detective novels I’ve read in a long time.

I discovered Timothy Harris’s work in the early 1980s when I stumbled upon a paperback edition of Good Night and Good-Bye. Cover copy hyped it as being “in the tradition of The Long Goodbye,” which automatically demanded that I read it because The Long Goodbye is my favorite novel. Read it I did, and found some similarities to Raymond Chandler’s masterwork, but was also pleased to see that, unlike too many other authors who tried unconvincingly to imitate Chandler, Harris chose to write in his own style, which is colorful and entertaining. As a result of loving the book, which I later acquired in hardback, I bought a copy of Kyd for Hire, Harris’s first novel about Southern California private investigator Thomas Kyd, which I recall thinking reminded in me ways of The Big Sleep, and which I also quite enjoyed.

Then I waited over thirty years for another Thomas Kyd novel. Fortunately, Unfaithful Servant–which description can refer to Kyd as well as to others in the story–was eminently worth the wait.

When Kyd is approached by fourteen-year-old Hugo Vine, who offers him a fifteen-thousand-dollar Rolex to watch his parents, his refusal sets the boy raging insults and obscenities at him. A few months later he encounters Hugo yet again. Their conversation is brief because Kyd is on a case and hasn’t time for a lengthy chat.

Hugo is the son of Hollywood actress Sally Vine and her late producer husband Daniel Vine, as Kyd learns when he’s contacted by Sally’s lawyer and summoned to the Vine home, threatened with the charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. In attendance at the meeting are the lawyer, Hugo’s therapist, a deputy city attorney, and a Robbery-Homicide detective with an attitude. It isn’t until the meeting ends that Kyd meets Raj LaSalle, Sally’s current husband, and Sally herself. The actress transparently manipulates the reluctant Kyd into accepting the job of keeping an eye on Hugo, who may or may not be using or dealing drugs, to learn what he’s up to and to prevent him from getting into trouble.

Doing so results in a stormy relationship with a determined, possibly disturbed, and ultimately endangered Hugo because it isn’t long before Kyd learns that the boy is certain his father’s death was not a skiing accident but a deliberate murder, and that he, Hugo, is not only sure he knows who the killer is, but also knows someone who claims to have witnessed the crime. As Kyd probes further, additional deaths occur, at least one of which he’s accused of, and he has to contend with cops who are honest but suspicious as well as others who are corrupt and brutal; sycophants with delusions of cinematic grandeur and their monied idols; tabloid “journalists;” a lawyer friend whose eye is always on the big, constantly-remunerative score; and those who would harm a savvy but justifiably depressed fourteen-year-old kid.

A successful screenwriter, Timothy Harris knows his turf, vividly evoking the Hollywood film community and the southern California landscape, external and internal. Building steadily to an intense finish, this is an excellently-paced novel in which the characters, major and minor alike, are three-dimensionally configured and examined insightfully. Not the least of these is Kyd himself. Unlike the heroes of most private eye series, about whom we’re told mostly superficial things and shown only their quotidian routines, Kyd reveals significant moments about his past, including boyhood and familial circumstances and events that shaped the man he has become, that were the geneses of some of the demons he must contend with now.

Unfaithful Servant was originally released in a hardcover edition from Five Star Publishing, which sells mainly to libraries. From what I’ve seen at Internet sites, booksellers are asking high prices for it both in hardcover and advanced reading copy paperback editions. As far as I’m aware, it has never been released in a trade or mass market paperback edition. I read it in reasonably-priced Kindle edition from Endeavour Press, which came out in 2014, but have not been able to find it in other electronic formats.

As has become all too typical in both physical and electronic books nowadays, this one has a few typos and some incorrect punctuation. Fortunately they’re relatively few, and most readers will find them ignorable. Two errors that stood out for me were venal, in discussing sin, when venial was the intended word; and Invisible Man model when the old Visible Man plastic model is what Harris meant. The other errors are not likely to disrupt a reader’s flow.

Unfaithful Servant is a must-read for fans of hardboiled private eye novels–provided they aren’t squeamish about street language and graphic violence. Although Harris doesn’t inundate the reader with raunchy verbiage, he doesn’t shy away from it when it serves to delineate someone’s manner of expressing himself and his feelings. Some of the violence is very explicit, especially that in a climactic moment in which a character gets his comeuppance. I found it satisfying; others may find it gross.

Timothy Harris, in my estimation, is a top-tier writer who merits the same kind of accolades and esteem accorded to masters of the genre Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Lawrence Block, among others. I highly recommend the title under consideration here and its two predecessors, which I should reread one of these days. The big question is whether there will be another Thomas Kyd novel–and when. I hope the answers are Yes and Soon because I probably don’t have another thirty years ahead of me.

© 2015 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/.

In 1952, accustomed to accompanying her pool shark father from one Texas poolroom to another where he earns money hustling suckers, seventeen-year-old Kristin Van Dijk doesn’t experience violence as a way of life. Not, at least, until a fateful night in Henry Chin’s poolroom when a member of the Lost Demons outlaw motorcycle gang shows up wanting revenge for having been hustled by her father. Violence erupts, resulting in multiple deaths that include those of Kristin’s father, Henry’s son, and one of the biker gang. Kristin is repeatedly raped and beaten by the bikers. When she recovers, having sustained some permanent damage and realizing the police aren’t taking the incident seriously, she is determined to hunt down the men responsible for the deaths and her condition. Henry Chin is equally determined.

Kristin gets help from several different experts who put her through a rigorous course of training until she becomes proficient at hand-to-hand combat, the use of firearms, and at shooting pool. Henry hires private detective Otis Millett to locate their quarry, and then he and Kristin go after them. Sometimes Kristin goes alone. Along the way she learns that  people are not always the seemingly respectable folks they present themselves as.

I read Baby Shark because a considerable number of people at a web group I belong to, one of whom is a close friend, have raved about it.  I enjoyed the book for what it is, a fast-paced, crisply told revenge/coming-of-age tale whose principal characters are decently fleshed-out (though most of the others are just names on the page). But I frankly don’t understand the raves. There’s nothing startlingly original about the premise, the violence that’s vividly depicted, or the characters. Permit me–or forgive me for using–movie references: after being raped and assaulted by “The Wild One,” a young woman transforms herself into  “The Karate Kid” and “The Hustler” to “Kill Bill.”

Will I read any of the sequels? Probably, if only to see in what direction the author takes his main characters, and to see how–and if–he develops them further. Mostly, however, Baby Shark hits me the way Mickey Spillane’s novels do: as ephemeral mind-candy.

I can’t address the paperback edition, but the Kindle edition could use a good proofreader to correct a significant number of punctuation errors.

© 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/.