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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

Steve Hockensmith, The Double-A Western Detective Agency: A Holmes on the Range Mystery

Steve Hockensmith, The Double-A Western Detective Agency: A Holmes on the Range Mystery
© 2018 Steve Hockensmith
ISBI 978-1-7905-516161


Steve Hockensmith’s The Homes on the Range series just might be my favorite on-going mystery series.  I think the continuing characters, especially Otto (Big Red) Amlingmeyer) and his brother Gustav (Old Red), are becoming favorites.  The narrative voice (Otto’s) is sharp (and sometimes discursive), funny, and altogether engaging.  And this entry (the 6th novel in the series) is just excellent.


The boys have, they (well, Gustav; Otto might retain some lingering doubts) hope, left behind their days as cowhands, and their more recent association with the Santa Fe Railroad police division, to become partners in the AA Western Detective Agency (headquarters in Ogden, Utah) with ex-Colonel C. Kermit Crowe and his adopted daughter Diana.  After six months of looking for, and not finding, clients, they have a case!  Clayton Haney, owner of a cattle ranch in the New Mexico Territory, has hired the agency to help solve a rustling problem.  And so Big Red, Old Red, and Diana are off, by train and coach.


When they arrive at the town of DeBarge, they notice, almost immediately, something very strange about the town—the businesses on one side of the (only) street are duplicated by stores with apparently identical products directly across the street.  A fact that will soon be explained.  The explanation comes when, while Otto and Gustav and Diana are talking with the town Marshal, Alfred Hinkle, he receives an urgent summons to break up a fracas at the DeBarge General Store (F. Martinez, Proprietor—just across the street from DeBarge Mercantile and Sundries (M. Baker Proprietor).  The AA crew tags along, and the Marshal rapidly buts an end(if only temporarily) to the hostilities.  And it transpires that the men causing the troubles are in the employ of Clayton Haney.

Things become more complex very quickly, the Marshal is found and Haney gets jettisoned as a client, the Sweeny clan (putative rustlers) become the new clients.  

And a pair of mysterious strangers—a Mescalero Apache and a hard-to-classify (Otto can’t get a good look at him—appear, and seem to be trying to run the Amlingmeyers out of the territory.  Yet another mysterious stranger, a Mr. Burr—who admits to being roving gambler—shows up.  


So the situation is complex, and made more difficulty by ethnic antagonisms.  But Gustav, applying the methods of (of course) Sherlock Holmes, moves steadily, albeit not directly, and with setbacks, to the solution.


Hockensmith has created an engaging cast of characters, all with strong and well-defined personalities.  The dialogue is sharp, the settings add a great deal to the story.  All in all, this is a highly successful mystery.  I look forward to the next entry in the series, which, with luck and if we’re all good girls and boys, will arrive with a shorter hiatus.

Rex Stout, Too Many Women

Rex Stout, Two Many Women
© 1947 Rex Stout
Random House
eISBN 978-0-3077-6808-7


I’ve read Too Many Women too many times, but for me most of Stout’s “Nero Wolfe” books are almost endlessly re-readable.  Despite its very apparent faults (from a contemporary perspective), it remains, after 70+ years, readable and entertaining. 


The plot is fairly straightforward.  An executive at Naylor-Kerr, Inc. (an engineering supply company, although that is actually all but irrelevant), Mr. Kerr Naylor (the son of one of the founders, and named after the other), responds to an internal questionnaire about employee turnover,  His explanation for the termination of Waldo Moore is one word:  Murdered.  Moore died at the end of the prior year, his body found on a deserted side street in Manhattan, run over by a car.  Wolfe is hired (with his assistant, Archie Goodwin, doing most of the work) to substantiate calling his death murder, or to disprove it.  The firm’s president (Jasper Pine) is married to Naylor’s sister (Cecily), who is the largest shareholder in the company.  (Naylor, who inherited 25% of the company’s stock, has retained voting control of it, but transferred ownership to a small number of long-time, now mostly retired, employees.)


Following Pine’s suggestion that Archie pose as a personnel expert, Wolfe takes the case and Archie does the legwork.  He discovers more than he might have hoped for, beginning with an extremely large number of young, apparently all attractive, women, their workspace being a single large open-plan room in which…well, let me let Archie describe it:

One good glance and I liked the job,  The girls.  All right there, all being paid to stay right there, and me being paid to move freely about and converse with anyone whomsoever…Probably after I had been there a couple of years I would find that close-ups revealed inferior individual specimens, Grade B or lower in age, contours, skin quality, voice, or level of intellect. But from where I stood at nine-fifty-two Wednesday morning it was enough to take your breath away.  At least a half a thousand of them, and the general and overwhelming impression was of—clean, young, friendly, spirited, beautiful, and ready.  It was an ocean of opportunity.

I think you can see how this aspect of the book would raise questions among today’s readers (and in fact I always find this part of the narrative somewhat off-putting, along with the depictions of the women employed there who have fairly important roles in the book).  The spell is broken when Kerr Naylor, having come up alongside Archie, says. “I doubt very much if there’s a virgin in the room.”  Which is another aspect of the book that does not play well with readers today.


(As an aside, I have always had a little difficulty with an open-plan work space filled with desks and filing cabinets and seating 500 or so clerical workers.  I rather think this is based on the famous Frank Lloyd Wright-designed S. Cc Johnson workspace, constructed in 1936-39, and one of the first, and still one of the most famous open-plan workspaces in America.  But I also think that such a space would have been highly unlikely in a 1930s vintage Manhattan high-rise.  My calculations suggest that to provide space for 500 clerical workers would require something like 40 square feet per workstation, plus something around half again as much space for filing cabinets and access and ceiling supports, or 30,000 sq.ft. of space—an open space some 300’x100’, which seems unlikely for a high rise at the time,

Archie begins the task of interrogating the staff (not limited to the clerical staff), and things are going nowhere.  Although Archie’s dealings with the clerical staff are related clearly, if discreetly.  Unfortunately, the results are underwhelming.  And Kerr Naylor decides to tell Archie that he actually knows who killed Wilmot Moore, but, as he has no evidence, he can say no more.  This little revelation, when reported to Pine, the corporate president, has repercussions, and Naylor tells Archie, before witnesses, that he never said he knew who killed Moore.  And, following another death and some stratagems by Wolfe, which put another employee at risk, we get a successful conclusion.


I’ll admit there’s a lot of sexism here, and the Pine household is a strange one.  (In common with a number of the other Wolfe stories, some of the sexual behavior of some of the characters would have been, well, unusual for the time.  Too Many Clients is a notable example of what I’m referring to.)  But if you can come at the book without letting that aspect of it dominate, it’s an interesting case, a generally well-plotted story.  Although I think the ending is a bit of a cop-out.

Where Is the Building that houses Naylor-Kerr, Inc., in the Nero Wolfe novel Too Many Women (by Rex Stout)

I'm re-re-re-re-re-re-re-reading Two Many Women, and very early on Archie comments that Naylor-Kerr has its offices in the general vicinity of Wall Street, and the executive offices are on the 36th floor.  So that's probably at least a 500-foot-tall building.  I've never done this before, but I was curious.  Here is a list (taken from a list of the 100 tallest buildings in Manhattan I found on the web, of all the buildings in Manhattan, 500+ feet tall, constructed before 1950:

The Empire State Building, 102 floors, 1250 feet, 34th Street and  and 5th Avenue.  Not near Wall Street.

The Chrysler Building, 1930, 77 floors, 1046 feet (counting the spire), 42nd and Lexington.  Not near Wall Street.

70 Pine Street, 1932, 66 floors, 952 feed, obviously at 70 Pine St.; about 2 blocks from Wall Street.

The Bank of Manhattan Trust Building*, 70 floors, 927 feet, 725 5th Ave,; not near Wall Street,

The RCA Building.**  1933, 70 floors, 850 feet, 1250 Avenue of the Americas.  Not near Wall Street.

The Woolworth Building.  1913, 57 floors, 792 feet.  223 Broadway, about a half mile north of Wall Street.

The City Bank-FarmersTrust Building.***  1931, 57 floors, 741 feet.  Basically on Wall Street.

500 Fifth Avenue.  1931, 60 floors, 709 feet.  Nowhere near Wall Street.

Met Life Insurance Tower.  1909, 50 floors, 700 feet.  Just off Times Square.

Lincoln Building.  1930 56-72 W. 42nd St.  Midtown.

1 Wall Street.  1931, 50 floors, 658 feet.  Definitely near Wall Street.

Chanin Building.  1930, 56 floors, 649 feet.  122 E. 42nd.  At Grand Central.

570 Lexington.  1931, 50 floors, 640 feet.  Midtown.

Mercantile Building.  1929, 48 floors, 629 feet.  10 E. 40th.  Midtown.

New York Life Building.  1928, 40 floors, 615 feet.  200 Park Ave.  Midtown.

So we have 70 Pine, The City Bank-Farmers Trust Building, 1 Wall Street as possibilities.  Given that the president of Maylor-Kerr was Jasper Pine, I'd bet on 70 Pine...

*Now the Trump Building,

**Now the GE Building

***Now 20 Exchange Place

Mark Pryor, The Book Artist

Mark Pryor, The Book Artist
© 2019 Mary Pryor
Seventh Street Books
ISBN 978-1-6388-488-5

The main character in this series is Hugo Marston, the head of security at the US Embassy in Paris, although most of what transpires in the books (of which this is the 8^th) is not related to his official position.  I

n this entry, the Ambassador has asked (i.e., ordered) him to attend the opening of a sculpture exhibit at the Dali Gallery in Montmartre, as a sort of chaperone for the artist, Alia Alsafar.  He’s reluctant, but his reluctance diminishes when he learns that her sculpture is made from books—Marston is a book freak; the fact that the ambassador refers to her as strikingly beautiful doesn’t hurt. 

And the woman who has been his companion for a while now, Claudia (whose last name I can’t find) is training for a marathon, and her run takes her past the Dali that evening—and she collapses and is taken to a hospital in an ambulance..  At about the same time, someone kills Alsafar.  The police inspector in charge of the investigation soon arrests Claudia—her DNA has been found on Alsafar’s body, and Claudia claims never to have met her.  Hugo, or course, butts into the investigation.

Meanwhile, a murder (Rick Hofer), who has recently been released from prison, is out to get Hugo and his good friend (and CIA spook) Tom Green.  Tom is in Amsterdam, on Hofer’s trail, and Hugo is, of course, torn between his desire to clear Claudia and Tom’s likely confrontation with Hofer.


I suppose it’s not really a spoiler to say that Hugo clears Claudia and helps Tom take care of the Hofer issue.


I’ve been a fan of this series since I read the first one (The Bookseller, 2012, but I’m less enthusiastic about this one.  Having Marston deal with the threat to Claudia’s freedom and the risk that Tom is taking in going after Hofer was probably necessary to get the book out to book-length, but it seemed to me to fragment things a bit too much.  And, in both threads, the climaxes were not particularly satisfying.  The interrogation—handled by Hugo, with the cop mostly just sitting in—seemed perfunctory and the murderer’s confession seemed mostly a matter of needing to wrap things up.  And the final confrontation with Hofer also felt almost perfunctory.


The Book Artist was, for me, just good enough to have warranted my time, but not good enough to keep me from putting it down after reading for a while.  I’ll continue to buy Pryor’s books, but I also hope things pick up in the next installment.

Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders
© 2017 Stormbreaker Productions Ltd.
Harper Perennial
ISBN 978-0-06-2623-4


This is a real tour de force, but it’s also remarkably difficult to write a review without including something that might be a spoiler.  So I’m not going to try to do any sort of plot recapitulation—you’ll have to read it for yourself.  I will say that the story has more twists and turns than a Grand Prix auto racing course.  I will also say, because it quickly becomes obvious, that one aspect of the book owes a lot to Agatha Christie.


Horowitz has created a sterling cast of characters, providing them with interesting, and relevant, back stories ((including insights into their characters and their work lives and their personal lives).  He has also created settings, from small-town England to London, that both support and deepen his narrative.  The investigations are handled nicely, and the denouement flows neatly out of what has gone before.  And, for those of you who like this sort of thing (I do), he provides us with some clever, sometimes initially hidden, wordplay.


I have read, and enjoyed, three of his other books (The House of Silk, Moriarty, and The Word Is Murder); this is a step above them.  And there are three more (The Sentence is Death, Trigger Mortis, and Forever and a Day) that I’m about to make sure I have.  I encourage you to do the same.