{"id":59,"date":"2013-12-21T20:12:10","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T02:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/?p=59"},"modified":"2013-12-21T20:12:10","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T02:12:10","slug":"a-pair-of-markham-pi-novellas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/a-pair-of-markham-pi-novellas\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pair of Markham PI Novellas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Death<\/a>Before he become known as a western writer, James Reasoner<\/a> wrote mysteries.\u00a0 A number of these were novellas that featured a PI named Markham and were published in Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine<\/em> in the early 1980s.\u00a0 Back in the summer, before Google started messing with me and I decided to launch my own site, James began publishing them as stand-alone ebooks. I read the first one, The Man in the Moon<\/em><\/a>, and enjoyed it. It was a traditional PI yarn, and I’m always up for one of those.<\/p>\n

Reasoner published two more. I bought them, and has been typical of this past year, they sat on my ereader until recently. I read those two yesterday, and enjoyed them.\u00a0 Here’s what I thought.<\/p>\n

Death and the Dancing Shadows<\/em><\/a>
\nKindle Smashwords<\/a> Nook<\/a> $0.99<\/p>\n

In this one Markham is hired by a retired movie cowboy to rescue his granddaughter. The young lady disappeared from USC but has recently been seen in a porn film a blackmailer has sent her grandfather. Markham grew up watching the actor’s films and wants to help him. He gets more than he bargained for. So does the movie cowboy.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of plot twists, one of which I found fairly predictable, but then I read a lot of detective fiction when I can. Reasoner keeps things interesting for Markham, never letting events work out the way he wants them to. There’s a murder, of course, but it doesn’t happen until over halfway through the story. I found the resolution of the murder well done and satisfying.<\/p>\n

The thing that stood out in this one for me wasn’t so much the plot, although I have no complaints there, but in the way Reasoner shows how Hollywood has changed since the late 1940s, when the movie cowboy in the story made his films. Reasoner has a genuine fondness for those films, and it shows in this story.<\/p>\n

\"War<\/a>War Games<\/em><\/a>
\nKindle Smashwords<\/a> Nook<\/a> $0.99<\/p>\n

This is the longest of the Markham novellas Reasoner has reprinted to date. It takes place at a private military academy somewhere in California. Someone has slipped death threats in the desk drawer of the Commander of the school. He hires Markham to investigate.<\/p>\n

Of course, the Commander has a list of suspects: a former student who he recently expelled, said student’s friend from the local town, and an English instructor who taught a subversive book the Commander didn’t like. (It was Catch-22<\/em> in case you’re wondering.)<\/p>\n

The plot is more complex here, and Markham develops a love interest in head of the English Department. (She isn’t the suspect, BTW.)<\/p>\n

I thought this one was better developed than Death and the Dancing Shadows<\/em>. That has to do with the length. The higher word count gave Reasoner more room to let plot lines develop, resulting in some nice twists. There’s more misdirection here, and I was caught off guard by who the person leaving the notes turned out to be.<\/p>\n

Both of these stories, as well as The Man in the Moon<\/em>, were written in the early 80s, so in a way they’ve become period pieces. With cell phones and the internet, things might have gone differently if the stories were written today.<\/p>\n

Because these stories were written early in Reasoner’s career, they aren’t quite as polished as his more recent work and the character development isn’t as subtle. That’s to be expected. The man continues to get better, and I would hope stories he wrote 30+ years ago aren’t as good as what he’s writing today. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Don’t let the age of the stories keep you from reading them, though. These are solid PI tales in the Raymond Chandler tradition, and they didn’t disappoint me.<\/p>\n

According to the Thrilling Detective Website, there were four Markham stories<\/a>.\u00a0 I hope Reasoner will publish the fourth.\u00a0 They’re a perfect way for me to scratch the I-need-a-PI-story itch when I’m buried under fantasy or science fiction novels I’ve committed to review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before he become known as a western writer, James Reasoner wrote mysteries.\u00a0 A number of these were novellas that featured a PI named Markham and were published in Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine in the early 1980s.\u00a0 Back in the summer, before Google started messing with me and I decided to launch my own site, James […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,15],"tags":[17,18,93],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebboks","category-private-investigators","tag-james-reasoner","tag-markham","tag-private-investigators"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P58L-X","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}