Stephen Marlowe is a well-known name in the Gold Medal circles for his Chester Drum novels of high-flying-private-eye-espionage action. He was never a "star" like a Donald Hamilton or a Richard S. Prather but the Chet Drum books lasted from 1955 to 1968 and are uniformly well-written action/thrillers that take Drum and his .357 all over the world hunting baddies not to mention the prerequisite pretty ladies that are involved. As Jason Ridgway he wrote a four-book series of wild mysteries for the "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" organization about an investigator for Ripley's hunting oddities around the world and falling into crime. He wrote a lot more stuff, some science fiction, some straight thrillers, some bids for a "big best seller" and finished his long career in the 90's writing a well-regarded trilogy about Christopher Columbus. Not bad at all.
"Dead Man's Tale" is a cold-war era mystery that bounds from the rubble of W.W.II to tell a tale of the quest two brothers take to finds a mysterious Czech named Milo Hacha. Steve Longacre is the right-hand man to a recently bumped off "political fixer" with a dark past who gets blackmailed by the fixer's wife to go make sure Milo Hacha is really dead since the fixer left him his whole estate and if Hacha is croaked it's hers. Along for the ride is Andy, Steve's fresh-faced college brother who tags along. Stylistically is very similar to Marlowe's other works. It has a travelogue feel as Steve and Andy trek across Europe and it's steeped in the Cold War-vibe of the Drums. But it has a more "literary" feel then a lot of the other novels I've read by him. It bounces from third person to first person-snippets of Andy's Diary, which is a bit jarring. But you get some dangerous border-crossings, Luger pistols, iron curtains, political assassinations, secret police, mob bosses, jilted wives, black-marketeers and blind-old killers.
When it comes down to it, this is sort of a minor-warmed-over "Third Man" and Milo Hacha is a second-rate Harry Lime. The book is simply too stuffed with minor characters that Marlowe spends too much time with. It either needed to be a 200 page + novel or edited and focused. Add that with the shifting POV which is something that I have never really warmed up too. I wonder what ghost-writing for Ellery Queen was like this is a tamer and more serious Marlowe. Marlowe was a pro so he might have just been writing for a specific market. The only other non-Queen that I have read was "The Black Heart Murders" the 2nd book in the Troubleshooter series about Mike McCall which was written by Richard Deming. It was a straight detective novel in the medium-boiled school, which to be honest is a lot like a Richard Deming novel. So, maybe it all came down to editorial pressure or maybe it was just Marlowe doing a dry run for his later more serious-minded novels. I haven't given up on the other ghosted-Queen books, I'm especially a sucker for these doubles that got put out. Can't beat two-for-one. This is probably my least favorite book I've ever reviewed. Only Marlowe's quality writing got me to finish. The reason there's no bad reviews on my blog is simply this: if a book doesn't work for me, I set it aside. I never muscle through a bad book. Life's too short for that. This isn't a bad novel, just a mediocre one from a helluva writer.
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