Thomas B. DeweyBesprekingen

The seventh book in this series is a great example of early sixties paperback originals. It is set in a very loosely disguised Laguna Beach, complete with Pageant of the Masters, artist's studios, cliffs leading down to fabulous beaches, and parties featuring mermaids who appear to be swimming in the punchbowl. It's a fast-moving, quick read that features a woman who wades into the surf as if by compulsion, a bunch of hoods, a sculptor with a tire iron, a gambling wife, a murder, and more.
Dewey gives the reader a well-crafted story that is a lot of fun to read. It has a lot of the classic PI story elements including the merciless hoods, the femme fatale throwing herself at the PI, and all kinds of racing back and forth before the pieces all fall into place. Dewey doesn't try to make this tale anything that it isn't and it works real well. Despite the hoods and the beatings, it still feels like a lighter PI tale - perhaps it's the beach town partying atmosphere with the endless martinis.

The Girl With The Sweet Plump Knees is a terrific old-style paperback private eye novel. You might think this one was a soft, cozy take at first with all the light banter and hanky panky between Pete Schofield and his sexy redheaded wife Jeannie. However, there's much more to this novel including a full-on boxing tale, an active riding ranch, a pair of hoods, a blonde babe in a fast car, gambling, strip clubs, and murder. This is a fast-moving and well-written tale and just an all around top notch read. Dewey knows how to tell a story and how to tell it well. Even the lighthearted portions of the story are good. Recommended read.

Run Brother Run could use a snazzier pulpier title, but that's really the only complaint with it. It is a terrific fifties-era pulp story that is easy to read and hard to put down. The pacing is terrific and the action relentless.

Dewey gives us a tale about a prison break, a group of ex-cons holed
up together with no one trusting each other and for good reason,
nightclubs, strippers, knife-wielding hoods, and a fortune in jewels.

It's much much more than your average prison break story and it's filled with terrific characters that really come alive visually. Reminded me a little of westlake's Parker novels.

Nothing -absolutely nothing not to like here

If you like classic hardboiled detective fiction with mobsters, beautiful dames, nightclubs, murder, and Fistfights, you will find no better detective series than Dewey's Mac series. Between 1947 and 1970, Dewey published sixteen books in this series and every single one of them is top-notch. Draw the Curtain Close is the first book in the series and it took Dewey six years to return to the series and give us a second one.

Draw The Curtain is tough and hardboiled. It features a world where there's little sunlight and there's all kinds of nefarious double crossing characters and crooked entanglements. Like mid classic Private eyes, Mac works by himself and has one pal on the police force, Donovan. The story is a typical tangle of double crossing crooks and, in typical classic PI fashion, leaves the reader in the dark as to what everyone's after till nearly the end.

What really works about this book is the nonstop pace that never lets up. If you've read lots of PI fiction, you've read other stories with the mobster asking the PI to work for him, the mobster's dazzling dame who has to be hidden from both the mob and the law, the frame up, and the chases through the town, but few can tell this story better than Dewey. This is simply the good stuff.

The Case of the Murdered Model (aka Prey for Me) (1954) is the third book in the Mac detective series and, if like me, you can’t get enough of the classic fifties pulp detective novels, this is just your ticket. Mac (no first or last name) is a Chicago private eye, tough, hardboiled, take-no-prisoners, and has a gruff relationship with the head of homicide, one lieutenant Donovan, who often gets Mac out of scrapes, but not till after they’ve had their differences. This is one of the best of the series. It is smoothly plotted and easy to read. All the action takes place in Chicago unlike some of the other books in the Mac series. This book has just about everything thrown in that you normally find in one of these fifties private eye novels, from murdered women, blackmail schemes, dirty pictures, preachers, hoods, nightclub owners, mistaken identity, and more. There is plenty of action in this book from fist fights to gunfire and more. There’s also quite a bit of suspense and a few good surprises thrown in. Mac has got the hardboiled attitude down pat. He is as tough and a no-nonsense as any of the old style detectives every were and just as stubborn.

The Chased and the Unchaste is the seventh novel in Dewey’s Mac series, falling about mid-way through the series. Published in 1959, this hardboiled detective novel is crisp and clean in its writing style. This one takes Mac from his mean streets of Chicago to tinseltown, where he works as a bodyguard for the family of a famous producer, his nubile young wife, Carol, who likes to swim au natural, and four- year-old Linda.

Much of the first half of the book takes place in the producer’s home with a revolving cast of estranged ex-wives, boxers, maids, cooks, nannies, executives, and the like making appearances. Mac tries to narrow down the cast to the few who really could be threatening the family and this part of the story feels a bit domestic and cozy. But, midway through, the story really opens up and goes straight into the familiar hardboiled territory with bodies turning up, mean cops turning on wiseguy out-of-town visiting private eyes, and the action really explodes.

The Mac series is a lot of fun to read and one of the most underrated and least known of the private eye series from the fifties and sixties.

Thomas Dewey's Mac series is the best of his three paperback series. Dewey was one of the great private eye writers of the fifties and sixties, his writing style is crisp, clean, easy to read. Here, Mac runs into a spider's web of strange and deadly coincidences beginning with a guy who comes to him after getting caught with his wife's corpse and all the evidence pointing to him. Teenage hoodlums, blackmail, parolees, and more. All around, just a terrific read.

This one falls about in the middle of the Mac series (8 of 16) and is just about everything you want in a PI novel. It is well written and easy to read. It starts out with quite a merciless bang and has you, as well as Mac looking for answers about who killed his friend and his friend's wife a year later. Mac has little to go in but hunches, but in typical hardboiled fashion, it includes rich dames, hardened hoods, nightclubs, and things that go boom. Although some of these plot lines can be found elsewhere, Dewey manages to keep a few surprises under wraps for much of the book. This was a terrific read and stands up well against any of the fifties-era private eye novels. Leaves me ready to dig into more of this sixteen book series.

Nude in Nevada, which neither takes place in Nevada nor features much nude action despite the title, is the final book in the nine book series of Peter Schofield novels published between 1957 and 1965. It is a fun and fast read that probably does not encompass more than a couple of hours of reading. There's nothing complex about this book. It's simply fun paperback original to read.
In the series Schofield runs a one man PI office and cases seem to have a way of dropping in on him. Sometimes clients find their way to him in unusual ways. This case is no exception to the pattern except that there's no client here. Instead, in the way back from Las Vegas, Schofield's fan belt goes and he luckily remembers an old chum with a cafe walking distance away. From there, all kinds of crazy things develop and Schofield keeps hanging around and running into more trouble.

One of the more unusual aspects of this PI series is that Schofield is happily married to Jeannie, a stunning redheaded San Fernando Valley housewife whose provocative figure always supplies a distraction to Schofield and who always is wiggling in or out of something. Few PI novels of the great paperback era feature wives at all and certainly none like Jeannie who is ready to hop in the backseat at any excuse.

Overall, it is a fun read that will easily keep you entertained. However, the plotting in this novel is a noticeable drop from the plotting if earlier novels in the series. There are all kinds of disparate things that are thrown together such as a retired wrestler in the Mojave desert, a femme fatale of a fully tattooed Eurasian dancer who barely speaks a lick of English, a bunch of hoods wreaking havoc, a general practically hypnotized by the dancer, and more. The plot barely hangs together and the shenanigans make little sense. But it's a fun read.

Only on Tuesdays is the eighth book in the nine book series of Peter Schofield novels published between 1957 and 1965. It is a fun and fast read that probably does not encompass more than a couple of hours of reading. There's nothing complex about this book. It's simply fun paperback original to read.

In the series Schofield runs a one man PI office and cases seem to have a way of dropping in on him. sometimes clients find their way to him in unusual ways. This case is no exception to the pattern. in fact, here, a client shows up at his house with a gun. After some harrowing moments where a gun is pointed at his wife, Schofield agrees to take the case --sort of. Eventually the case involves gunfire, possible kidnapping, blackmail, murder, danger on the high seas, a femme fatale the tiniest bikini imaginable, a simpleminded blonde, a secret marriage, and lots and lots of trouble -- And more.
One of the more unusual aspects of this PI series is that Schofield is happily married to Jeannie, a stunning redheaded San Fernando Valley housewife whose provocative figure always supplies a distraction to Schofield and who always is wiggling in or out of something.

Overall, it is a fun read that will easily keep you entertained.

In California of the late 1960s, teenage Dawn Reinhart has run away to live with her boyfriend, in a subculture of "hippies", drugs, and free love. This fictional tale is told in the first person by the private detective hired by Dawn's father to find her. He uncovers a murder, a drug smuggling enterprise, and an environment populated by Hells Angels, street preachers, bars, slick operators, cops, and the ubiquitous "hippies." Of course not everyone is what they appear. The answer to who has done what comes as a mild surprise, because the reader is not given the appropriate clues. A choice for the Detective Book Club in 1969, this story is light entertainment of the genre. Many current readers may find the story dated by its time frame; but a few may appreciate its evocation of "the 60s."