With Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, I continue the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.”  The sleuths of The Midas Bomb and Angels Need Not Apply will embroil you in action and suspense yet again.  As a mystery novel (my first), it is a dark probing into the nexus the crime underworld sometimes enjoys with the rich and powerful.  Chen is arrested for the murder of a senator in circumstances that seem to leave no doubt of her guilt, but Castilblanco helps prove her innocence.  With this new crime novel, I continue the saga of your two favorite detectives as they and their companions fight the corrupting influence of the illegal weapons trade.  Available soon.  Here is an excerpt:

***

“That’s one mixed-up kid,” said Chen as we tried to flag a taxi.

“Maybe you were the only sane one who went to bed with the bastard,” I said.

“You manage to praise me and insult my choices at the same time, Rollie.  That’s very efficient of you.”

A taxi stopped, she climbed in, and slid to the street side of the seat.  I followed her.  The cabby took Central Park North to Fifth.

“I’m assuming it wasn’t his power or money, so I’m at a loss.  But I’ll apologize.”  I raised my hands in defeat.  “I don’t think she did it.”

“I know you like Drach for the murder.  He does seem to be key.  Unless it was the hot dog vendor.”  The slight smile meant she accepted my apology.  “I take it you don’t like any of the ex-wives or girlfriends.  Besides Drach, who else could it be?”

“Well, there’s Kingsman and the old lady.  And how ‘bout Grasso?”

“I think Grasso leads to Drach.  Maybe we should determine who told him to put out the contract on me.”

A motorcycle pulled parallel with us.  Single rider dressed as messenger.  Not carrying packages, though.

“Down!”

Safety glass shattered as bullets slammed into the car.  The driver slumped, the car spun and rolled, we flipped twice, slid upside-down into a crowd, and ended by destroying a hydrant on Fifth between 92^nd and 93^rd.

My window was intact, so I used my Glock to break it.  I decided on second thought I would never fit through it.  I pushed down the door handle and gave the door a kick with both feet.  After the third time, it popped open.  We crawled out.

The driver was dead.  Chen was cut by flying glass.  I was OK but pissed.  We backed away when the gas tank exploded.

Two uniforms came running.  We flashed our badges.

“Didn’t happen to see anything, did you?” I said.

“Heard the shots,” said one.  “I think it was a guy on a cycle.  Delivery guy, maybe?”

“Call it in—backup, EMTs, coroner, the whole nine yards.  Then do some crowd control and start finding witnesses.  I want a license number and description.  The guy didn’t have a helmet.”

“That’s against the law now,” said the younger cop.

Maybe New York’s finest but not the brightest?  My expression wasn’t sympathetic.  Chen smiled.

***

 In libris libertas….

[If you enjoyed this post, support this blog: buy, read, and review some of my books.]

It might seem like forever, but only two weeks ago the American public had to face two acts filled with terror.  One of them was avoidable; the other, probably not.  The avoidable one was the fire and explosion at that fertilizer plant just seventy plus miles from Dallas in West, Texas.  The unavoidable one was the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

It’s ironic but expected that the event in Texas occurred where states’ rights and minimal federal government intervention is strong.  Our federal inspection system has been anemic at best, traditionally starved for funding and personnel and filled with corruption.  The GOP in general and the Tea Party in particular don’t want to fund anything that even carries the faint aroma of meddling in the affairs of the States, unless that meddling implies sending bacon back home to their constituent areas.  The sequestering will only exacerbate this.

(more…)

(William F. Brown, Winner Lose All, ASIN B00CEOKUR8)

Eyes play an important role in Bill Brown’s historical thriller and romance, Winner Lose All.  It’s his third historical novel; I reviewed his first for Bookpleasures.  Except for the fact that they take place during and after the final days of WW II, they are not related.  For the historical thriller part, here we have OSS spy Edward Scanlon, with the penetrating gray eyes, traveling to Leipzig and honing his spy skills with NKVD agent Hanni Steiner, a bright blue-eyed blond, whose allegiance is to a new Germany, her father, and Beria, the Russian spy-master.

Scanlon is captured and tortured.  Hanni helps him escape and flee the country.  From that moment, the OSS agent finds that he can trust no one—not the British, not the Americans, and certainly not the Russians or Nazis.  His second OSS mission, handled personally by Allen Dulles, is to obtain the plans and personnel associated with the Nazi experimental program to develop a new jet fighter, its prototype already playing havoc with the Allied bomber squadrons.  Stalin also wants those plans and personnel, so Hanni is given the same mission.

I’ll not spoil the rest of this thrilling story nor give away the poignant ending, but let me say there is also plenty of romance here in the relationship between Scanlon and Hanni.  I first thought that much of the dialog and description here was a bit schmaltzy, but I then thought back to those old classic films.  Yes, they talked like that back then.  Men wooed women and suffered in silence too, from Romeo and Juliet to Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca (that movie plot is similar, in fact).  This is great stuff.  I’m a sucker for it, although I don’t read many war stories anymore (and certainly can’t write them).

My one historical nit to pick: Allen Dulles might have been a brilliant chess master in the OSS and early CIA, but he and his brother’s paranoia toward world communism (partly justified, of course), as exported by the Soviet Union, definitely led to some bad choices.  One of these, the overthrow of the duly-elected government of Iran and the installation of the Shah, still haunts us.  Other gaffes in South America make it hard for me to put him on a pedestal as is done in this book, the last scenes of which take place in 1959, after that Iranian overthrow.  This is an insignificant item, however, within the broad landscape painted in the book.

This is the best book I’ve read so far this year.  In fact, it goes in the list on my webpage “Steve’s Bookshelf” in the “Stealth Reads—Books by New and Promising Authors” category, although Mr. Brown is certainly not a new author.  He has confirmed his subgenre-niche in writing this excellent historical thriller.  I hope he continues to keep writing them.

(Mr. Brown kindly provided me this ebook in return for an honest review.)

In libris libertas….

[If you enjoyed this review, please support this blog: buy, read, and review of some of my books.]