Terrence Faherty, Play a Cold Hand

Terrence Faherty, Play a Cold Hand
Perfect Crime Books 2017
Copyright © 2017 Terrence Faherty
ISBN978-1-7324-1-8400

Scott Elliott, the protagonist of Terrence Faherty’s fine series of PI novels set in post-World-War-II LA, returns after six years (Dance in the Dark).  It’s now 1974, nearly 30 years since Elliott went to work for Paddy Maguire’s Hollywood Security, and Maguire has been murdered, his body found in an alley.  Maguire had retired, had, in fact, sold Hollywood Security to a larger firm (for which Elliott has gone to work).  Walter Grove, an LAPD Captain, warns Elliott to butt out.  Which, of course, he promptly proceeds not to do.

But Elliott does have his job to consider, and a hot young director (Amos Decker) has asked specifically for him.  Not, as it turns out, for any security reasons, but to pick his brains about a con run on gangster-turned-movie-producer Ted (Moose) Marriutti in the early 1950s.  The con, a variation called the Kansas City Shuffle, was orchestrated by Maguire, and Elliott was a major player.  Marriutti is dead, as are most of the principals.  But Elliot remembers most of it, and Decker wants to use the con as the basis for a movie he’s scheduled to direct (a riff, of course, on The Sting, which was released in 1973). 

Elliott rapidly discovers that what happed in the early 1950s is not dead and buried.  Among others, estranged his wife, Ella, was involved with the events that led Maguire to run the con on Marriutti, but is involved with the echoes of it that led to Maguire’s death, and Elliott’s attempt to discover his killer.  (If there’s anything surprising about this, it’s that so many of the people involved in the 1950s part of the tale are still alive and active in 1974.) 

Elliott is our narrator for this excursion into the past and its present ramifications, and his narrative voice is fine—a bit wistful for the past, a bit lost because of his estrangement from Ella, a bit compelled to discover who killed his mentor, friend, and father-figure Maguire.  Faherty does Hollywood in the ‘40s and ‘70s extraordinarily well, and Elliott’s investigation plays fair with the reader.  The conclusion is well-handled, too.  All in all, this is a very good story, blending the past and the present, populated with well-drawn, compelling characters.  While a part of a series, it can easily be read as a stand-alone.  Although I would encourage you to seek out the earlier books as well (Kill Me Again, 1994; Come Bask Dead, 1977; Raise the Devil, 2000; In a Teapot (novella), 2005; and Dance in the Dark, 2011; as well as a volume of shorts, The Hollywood Op, 2011). 

As an aside, one of the things I have enjoyed about the Scott Elliott is his fixation with cars.  And, in Play a Cold Hand, I got to look at images of 4 classic cars, three from the in “backstory” parts of the book (1951) and one in the “present day” (1974).  So here’s a chance for you, too to see Scott’s cars.

1974 Lincoln Continental Mark IV

1951 Hudson Hornet Coupe

1951 Chrysler Saratoga

1951 Pontiac Chieftain