From SLOW HOT WIND:

“Lila was more than everything you dream about on long winter nights when you want to keep warm. Lila was the stuff your DREAMS dreamed about on long winter nights, for inspiration.”

“Lila didn’t have a mean bone in her luscious body. She wasn’t stupid, just nice. Now if you’re wondering how a girl like that got mixed up in pictures, a business dirtier than the panties on a cathouse clothesline, you weren’t the only one who wondered.”

So says Private Detective Sam Barlow about the sweet woman who hires him to find her wayward husband. Barlow’s good at his job, and even better as a storyteller. He reminds me of the great Phillip Marlowe, which is a very good thing.

GLASS ALIBI:

On a lonely late night, Mike enters a little hole-in-the-wall diner to get out of the rain, which despite pouring in buckets, is in a losing battle against the grime of San Francisco. Either by chance or fate, he meets Nora.

“She was in her early forties, with a wavy pile of pretty brunette hair that would slowly begin to gray over the next ten or fifteen years. The tag over one of her big soft breasts told me her name was Nora. She was full and soft everywhere, and when she turned to put something away it made me hungry for more than food. Wrinkles at the corners of her eyes added something to her allure. They screamed that she was a woman, not a little girl.”

She also had a black eye at the hands of her abusive husband.

Mike tells us, “I should have run back out into the wet night, but Nora filled a hole inside me that drew me toward her, like a newborn moth to the warmth of flickering flame.”

From there, the story takes off like a Frazer Nash Le Mans at the race track.

Writing with all the style of the classic noirs of the ‘40s, Underwood uses sharp dialogue and brilliant descriptions that are as crisp as dried Autumn leaves. There’s suspenseful, dangerous twists and turns on this fast curvy road that you won’t see coming, before coming to a most satisfying climax.

Fans of noir fiction shouldn’t miss either of these fantastic stories. ( )