Trouble Is My Business – Raymond Chandler

Chandler, Raymond. Trouble Is My Business . Distributed Proofreaders Canada. Kindle Edition.

This is a collection of four Philip Marlow classic short stories ripped from the pages of Black Mask magazine.

In the first story… a case of extortion, blackmail, revenge and murder, Philip Marlow is subcontracted to rescue an infatuated young man from the clutches of a vicious vixen, after a prior detective on the case turns up deceased things take a turn for the sinister as nefarious types get the drop on our hero. Through bold fisticuffs and intrepid determination, Marlow makes it through to bagging the bag guys.

In the second one Philip Marlow due to testify against a corrupt political boss takes a bodyguard side job for a friend,  when  the friend gets bumped off on the way back from winning a bundle at a wheel rigged roulette wheel… Philip feels a frame… and the tomato playing the numbers at the wheel is telling too many stories to keep it straight.

The third story, Goldfish – Philip Marlow is on the trail of a pair of pearls in a pretty pricy caper… and a determined dame with a flair for violence, is no deterrent. Seems a pair of pearls earnings went missing from a robbery a couple of years ago. The insurance men will pay twenty five thousand for them and a former police woman turned boarding house madam has a clue to there whereabouts. .. twenty five thousand split two ways is a lot of dough. But the bird who gave her the tip have chipped to another, more ruthless chickadee who may just have a head start on Marlow.

The forth, a case of purloined pearls, Marlow falls into a case of cheating spouses and cheating chiselers. The hot Santa Ana winds feature through this story. Marlow steps into a new bar opening across the street from his apartment building. Only one other guy is sitting there, when a man walks in looking for a dame. A rather specific dame, and he describes what she’s wearing. Neither Marlow nor the bartender have seen her, and adds the man goes to leave, the other patron at the bar shoots him and flees, jumping into the guy’s car still running outside. And as fate would have it… the Dame as described just happens to be walking through the hallway in the apartment building across the street.

   The door opened with a jerk and Finlayson and Sebold came in. Sebold looked as spruce and nasty as ever, but Finlayson looked older, more worn, mousier. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand. He sat down across the desk from me and gave me a hard bleak stare.
   “Guys like you get in a lot of trouble,” Finlayson said sourly. Sebold sat down against the wall and tilted his hat over his eyes and yawned and looked at his new stainless-steel wrist watch.
   “Trouble is my business,” I said. “How else would I make a nickel?”

Lethally Wedded – J A Jones

Jones, J.A.. Lethally Wedded . Second Reef Publishing. Kindle Edition.

I want a t-shirt for finishing this story! I really feel like I deserve some sort of reward for finishing this story since the story itself didn’t provide any. This tragic tale of mail-order bride woe is narrated in the first person with different  characters telling their part of this lackluster yarn. DWM, Stan, fifty-something lonely man seeks SWF bombshell for marriage sex and citizenship… no mystery here.

Stan meets Tatiana online. She’s living with her friend Julia in an apartment managed by Victor after the death of her husband Boris. So you can see the level of imagination we have going on here…  I would not be surprised if in the first draft of this, Julia was named Natasha.

So, Tatiana come to America and between the luxury brand product placements and commercials for Costco… a story is told. Boy meets girl, girl meets dog trainer, girl meets love of her life rock star, boys rich mother dies, girl plans to kill boy… and at this point Stan is so poorly defined, I really don’t care if she offs him or not. These characters are so flat that I’m hoping for a quick death so I can get out of this book that much quicker.

I should have shelved this book halfway through. But, it has one saving grace… it’s lack of depth and detail makes it very skimmable. So, in for a penny, I stayed to see the big ‘twist’ at the end… I’m not going to spoil it here, but if I did… you would thank me for not letting you experience this lack of a mystery for yourself.

   “Are you really sure about this?” Holly said as she picked at her premade Costco salad of kale, tomatoes, and something that looked like grass.
   “It’s just a ninety-day fiancé visa,” I said as I picked up my slice of greasy pepperoni pizza. Costco made arguably the world’s best pizza, mozzarella cheese melted just right, a tiny bit burnt, the crust crunchy. For only $1.99 a slice! The generous slice of pizza completely covered the paper plate. It was like getting half a pizza for $1.99. Such a deal. I took a bite and wiped at my mouth with a paper napkin as the grease threatened to drip down my chin. “I’m just bringing her over for a visit. You’ll get to meet her, tell me what you think.”
  “What about the ring?”
   “I just wanted an excuse to see you at my favorite lunch spot,” I said, treating her to one of my killer smiles.

The Jealous Kind – James Lee Burke

The Jealous Kind – James Lee Burke, published by Simon and Schuster 2016

This book has something to say I can feel that in me… but I just don’t seems to be cracking it open. I feel it’s like a Rubik’s cube that needs to be unlocked, and I could do it, it is within me to break through the veil, but it would take more effort than I’m will to expend… and I’m asking myself is James Lee Burke the author to to tell me… I feel he’s speaking man to ,an but to a man who can relate to this particular time frame… the lesson transcends geography but not the timeframe, where as Hemingway speaks make  to make in a way that transforms both location and time…

The paradox of detail … not enough detail and it could be any place, anywhere, anyone… too much detail locks a story in time or place… the character seems less a character and more a portrait of a specific person.

This story start with Aaron Broussard doing something that he’s not been able to do before… stand up to bullies. Being that this is James Lee Burke, the bullies are the well-heeled set. But its not for himself that he stands his ground but on behalf of Valerie Epstien, a damsel in distress. Well, maybe not distress, but certainly on a bad date.

But it I thought it strange that the scene that opens this story, a swimmer of the coast of Galveston in the late 50’s, is almost the same scene as the opened to James Lee Burke’s novel Crusader’s Cross one of the Dave Robicheaux novels.

Now there is a a murder lurking in the background of this story, but its not so much at the heart of this story for me to really consider this a ‘mystery’ per say. So… somewhere around the halfway mark I’ve put this back up on the shelf… perhaps I’ll pull it down and pick up where I left off… when I’m older and wiser and too advanced in years to benefit from the good advice I’m sure is there just hidden beneath the surface.

“I was trying to tell you you’re everything that’s good. That’s why I couldn’t understand how you could go out with Harrelson. I’m not the same since that night at the drive-in.”
“Don’t talk stupid. People don’t change,” she said. “They grow into what they’ve always been. They just stop pretending, that’s all.”
My head felt small and tight. My cheeks were burning. I couldn’t speak.
“Some people are the jealous king,” she said. “They don’t love themselves, so they can’t love or trust anyone else. There’s no way to fix them. That’s why you’re really upsetting me.”
“I think that’s the worst thing anyone ever said to me.”
“I’m going upstairs now and lie down,” she said. “You can let yourself out.”

Someone We Know – Shari Lapena

Someone We Know – Shari Lapena, Viking 2019 and I borrowed my copy from the library. A perfect place to try new authors.

This isn’t a whodunit mystery in a traditional sense, there simply aren’t enough clues for us to reasonably follow but it’s a solid character driven mystery much like her novel The Couple Next Door… but where that story focused on the police procedure and plot driven, this is more like an Unwanted Guest in that the story is strongly driven be well written and multilayered characters both suspects and those who suspect them alike.  Shari… she spends a lot of time showing means motive and opportunity to several characters in this story, each set of particulars turning and twisting but not all the pieces fit together for any of them. Sure the circumstantial evidence is there for each on spades, but when it comes down to it, is the killer someone we know?

The story starts right off with Raleigh committing a break in and roaming about a neighbor’s house. Seems this is his idea of kicks. Meanwhile a neighbor Robert has reported his wife Amanda missing. Seems the flirtatious young wife he’s simply disappeared.  That is until a chance encounter in a lake not far from town reveals her body in the trunk. As detectives Webb and Moen start making inquiries they begin to  find no lack of suspect and no lack of motives in what appears to be an insular close knit community of neighbors. Meanwhile, the questions the investigation spawn lead friends and neighbors through a series of revelations uncovering the secrets that unexpectedly bind them together.

“Parenting is so stressful, she thinks, glancing sidelong at her moody son slouched in the seat beside her. You try to do your best,  But really what control do you have over them once they’re not little anymore? You have no idea what’s going on inside their heads, or what they’re up to. What if she’d never seen that text? How long would it have gone on – until he was arrested and the cops showed up at the house? He was breaking into places, snooping through people’s lives, and they’d known nothing about it. If anyone has accused her son of such a thing, she would never believe it. That’s how little she knows him these days. But she saw those texts herself. He admitted it. She wonders uneasily if he’s keeping any other secrets. She parks the car in their driveway and says, “Raleigh, is there anything else you want to tell me?”