About Dead-Bang Fall
Title: Dead-Bang Fall
Author: J. R. Sanders
Genre: Mystery, Detective, Who-dun-it
Synopsis:
March 1939, and try as he might, private eye Nate Ross can’t seem to stay clear of Hollywood. His latest case, a penny-ante theft caper, turns deadly serious when one of the miscreants is murdered and Nate’s the prime witness. No sooner does L.A.P.D.’s number one suspect – a former friend and disgraced ex-colleague – turn up asking for Nate’s help than he goes on the run again, from both the police and Nate.
Nate’s forced to come to terms with more than one ghost from his past as his struggle to prove his on-the-lam client’s innocence brings him up against hostile cops, a pair of rolling assassins, film pirates, mobsters, and a girl who may need his help or may be playing him for a chump.
Review from Anita Dickason!
Shades of Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and Mike Hammer. From the first page, I was drawn back to another era of gumshoe detectives, roscoes, gats, packing heat, fins, seedy bars and rummies, coppers, booze, and shady ladies.
It’s 1939, and Nate Ross, an ex-cop turned private eye, is sucked into a mystery filled with crime and mayhem when he’s hired to investigate a penny-ante theft of ticket money at a local movie house. When the doorman turns up dead, Nate fingers a crooked cop who was part of a gang Nate busted for a spree of burglaries as the killer. It’s a dead-bang fall, open and shut case until the suspect shows up on Nate’s doorstep, avidly protesting his innocence.
Nate isn’t buying his old partner’s claims. He has a thing about a “copper pulling burglaries while packing a star and pissing on every other square copper’s badge.” Nate’s problem is there could be a nugget of truth in the man’s story. For Nate, it’s enough to take on the case, and it soon puts him in the crosshairs of two killers.
The plot is thoroughly engaging and well-thought-out. The characters and dialogue are well-developed. It’s a realistic bad guys vs. the good guy crime novel with intrigue and a labyrinth of clues and hints trying to connect the dots. Things are not always what they seem, and the plot kept me guessing right up until the end.
A page-turner from start to finish. Dead-Bang Fall hits all my marks for an entertaining read as Author J. R. Sanders seamlessly led me through another time and place.
