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Private Investigators

Review

The Wheel of Doll

by Brian Kenney

This is turning out to be one of the most unique, captivating, and above all emotionally engaging crime fiction series being published. Happy Doll—yes, that’s his real name—is 50-ish, ex-military, and a former LAPD cop who lost his PI license and now calls himself a “security consultant.” Yes, Doll has many of the noirish trappings of your classic LA detective, from his worn-down office to his status as a regular at a dive bar. But he’s also a fledgling Buddhist who’s in love with George, a half-Chihuahua, half-terrier mix, is in psychotherapy, and is incredibly generous to those he comes across—provided they’re not trying to kill him. In this story, Doll is approached by a young woman to search for her mother, Iris Candle, who’s likely to be homeless. Candle and Doll, it turns out, were lovers years ago, and Doll can’t turn down an opportunity to see her again. After a week of searching, Doll finally locates Candle—worn down by drugs and years of living on the streets—and their reunion is one of the most poignant passages I’ve read in years. It also sets off the book’s real narrative, complete with some horrific, but highly entertaining, violence and a quest that brings Doll to the edge. As much as I love Ames’ novels and comic memoirs, Happy Doll is his most innovative and successful character yet. Fans of aged, semi-hard-boiled, humorous Los Angeles detectives will also enjoy Andy Weinberger’s The Kindness of Strangers.

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Review

Knock Off the Hat

by Brian Kenney

It’s summer in post-World-War-II Philadelphia. The temperature is rising, and so too is the gay bashing, thanks to the police department and the City’s hugely corrupt judicial system. Tough-talking, but also hugely funny, Clifford Waterman—a former police detective who received a dishonorable discharge from the Army for being caught in the act in Cairo—is trying to make a go as a noirish PI. He’s hired to get the charges against a young man caught up in a bar raid dismissed and his $500 bribe reduced. Shake-downs of lesbians and gay men are nothing new, but Waterman begins to realize that the scope of the attacks and the size of the bribes are escalating hugely—along with the psychological damage and suicides that the publicity is causing among the LGBTQ community. Waterman’s search is a broad one, taking him throughout the greater Philadelphia area and up and down the social ladder. Sex and lovers, the relationships between Black and white queer men—expect the racist language of the day—and jazz and the blues all contribute to creating a memorable time and place. It’s great to have the author of the ground-breaking Don Strachey novels back with what we can only hope will be as prolific a series.

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Review

Lavender House

by Brian Kenney

It’s 2 p.m., and Evander “Andy” Mills is sitting alone at a bar, suicidal ideations dancing in his head. And for a good reason. A detective with the San Francisco police, his world was ripped apart when he was caught in flagrante delicto during a raid on a gay bar and thrown off the police force. This is, after all, 1952, and until now Andy has succeeded in keeping his sexuality locked away from the rest of his life. As he reaches for his fifth martini, he’s interrupted by a society woman who has a proposal for him: investigate the mysterious death of her wife, Irene Lamontaine, who died in Lavender House, the family estate. Did she say “wife?” Indeed she did. And off we go to Lavender House, home to the Lamontaine family, who own a soap dynasty, and where nearly everyone, from family members to the help, is absolutely queer. Their world is a fascinating one, as free as it is safe—until, that is, Irene was murdered. No reader who’s made it through the first chapter could ever think of abandoning this magical novel as it morphs into a sort of locked-room mystery with culprits everywhere. But as engrossing as the Lamontaines may be, it’s Andy who centers the narrative, and who emerges from the story—to use contemporary jargon—beginning to heal, both physically and emotionally. Here’s hoping this is just the beginning of Andy Mills’ investigations.

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Review

An Honest Living

by Henrietta Thornton

Take a trip back to early 2000s Brooklyn in this work of literary noir that lurks on the edges of the art world. Noir novels present an investigator who’s down on his or her luck, and here it’s Dwyer Murphy—yes, the main character has the same name as the author—a former corporate lawyer who couldn’t take the hours, the billing in six-minute increments, or the colleagues. Now he’s going it alone, but he needs the odd lucrative job (even the odd shady one) to stay afloat. He takes a sad case: one party in an acrimonious divorce wants him to try to buy books off her husband; she suspects that he’s selling some of her valuable, inherited volumes and needs the proof. Two things are strange: the “books” are esoteric, early American legal pamphlets such as “Confessions of Tom Mansfield who Corrupted and Murdered His Servant,” which Dwyer had no idea were collectibles, let alone worth taking risks over. And then he faces being sued by the wife because he’s ruining her husband’s reputation. There’s no end to the rich-people twistedness here, which is both incredible and all-too believable. That’s enjoyable enough, but best is the slow-burn, quirky trip with the steadfast Dwyer, who puts one foot in front of the other until he figures out what’s going on. A kinda, sorta Thelma-and-Louise ending caps the saga, but leaves room to wonder what’s next for the lovable Dwyer.

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Review

Fadeout

by Brian Kenney

First published 50 years ago, Fadeout introduced David Brandstetter, a ground-breaking detective—he works as an insurance claims investigator—who is openly and unapologetically gay. This was at a time, as Michael Nava reminds us in his introduction, when “49 out of 50 states criminalized gay sex between consenting adults and the American Psychiatric Association deemed homosexuality a mental disorder.” One of the great contributors to California noir, Hansen went on to redefine the private eye through 11 more Brandstetter novels (all being republished in print and as ebooks by Syndicate Books), stretching from 1965 and the rising counterculture to the late ‘80s and AIDS. Throughout, Brandstetter regularly touched on hypocrisy and homophobia, while managing to attract the largest readership queer crime fiction had ever received. Fadeout focuses on the disappearance of Fox Olson, a country singer and radio star whose car was driven off a bridge during a storm and the body never found. Brandstetter doesn’t buy it. In prose so lean and evocative you want to stop and read it aloud, we follow Brandstetter as he goes deep into Olson’s life as well as his own, each achingly sad in its own way.

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Review

The Kindness of Strangers

by Brian Kenney

We have cozies. We have thrillers. But what about mensch mysteries? Because Amos Parisman, AKA the oldest living Jewish PI in Los Angeles, is the definition of a real mensch. In this third book in the series, Amos comes out of retirement—a retirement he doesn’t want—to help the police investigate the murder of a homeless woman, whose corpse he discovers in the bottom of a garbage bin. Soon enough, that murder is followed by others, until it becomes clear that Amos and his sidekick, Omar, have a serial killer on their hands. While the search for the killer provides the underpinning of the novel, there’s always a lot more happening in an Amos Parisman mystery than just the crimes. Here, Amos does a lot of research into the homeless—so often invisible—and the discomfort they provoke in much of society. Also prominent in this volume is Amos’s poignant relationship with his wife, Loretta, who’s now living in a nursing home as she has advanced dementia, and his growing relationship with Mara, whose husband also lives in the home. A wonderful voice, great storytelling, and a completely unique character.

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Review

Darkness Falls

by Henrietta Thornton

A series that just keeps getting better. Kate Marshall and her sidekick, Tristan Harper, have finally gotten their PI agency off the ground, and their first case is a cold one: a mother hires them to investigate the death of her daughter, Joanna Duncan, murdered 12 years ago. Fortunately, they are able to get their hands on the original case files and go about replicating the earlier investigation—to much different results. Joanna was an ambitious, hard-hitting journalist who made some enemies in her career. But as Kate and Harper dig deeper, they’re pulled in surprising directions, including an exploration of the last few decades of the local gay community. Bryndza is an expert at including just the right amount of information about our investigators’ personal lives: Kate continues in recovery, enjoying her relationship with her young adult son, while Tristan is broke, despairing of his single status. As the novel draws to a close, and the many leads come together, we are treated to a denouement as satisfying as it is sorrowful.

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Review

Pay Dirt Road

by Henrietta Thornton

In this striking, character-driven debut, Annie McIntyre is back in her stifling—temperature-wise and socially—Texas hometown, Garnett, where football is a religion and prom queen a lifetime appointment. Smart, introspective Annie escaped and went to college, but now she’s waiting tables while student-loan repayments loom. When a hit-and-run death and the strangling of Annie’s coworker happen within days of each other, it seems like Garnett’s dirt and buildings as much as its people heave a resigned sigh at another thing to deal with. Annie’s former-sheriff grandfather now has a private investigation business, but it falls mostly to his granddaughter to care enough to solve the cases. The language of Annie’s inner thoughts is the kind of writing that makes you too stunned to read on for a bit. Her anguish at a teenage attack is “a morsel of pain under my tongue” and her lingering bedtime thoughts are “ghosts pressed and curled against my back.” Allen already won the Tony Hillerman Prize for Best First Mystery Set in the Southwest for this book, and no wonder. While waiting for this, try Wiley Cash’s also-stunning A Land More Kind Than Home, which Allen’s writing brings to mind.

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