This fantastic collection of nostalgia crime noirs contains three of my all-time favorites from the pen of Bobby Underwood.

BEAUTIFUL DETOUR

Take a Beautiful Detour back to the latter days of WWII when men were men, and women were women. Picture a handsome P.I., ex-Air force pilot, fresh from being shot down in the war, meeting a beautiful woman who reminds you of the extraordinarily alluring Veronica Lake.

“…she’s short but packed with lovely, graceful curves. She has long blonde hair that comes in waves and sparkles when the sun hits it, and a voice made for saying romantic things when it gets dark.”

Susan, or “Mike”, as our hero John calls her, is in a bind with a couple of gangsters over a valise full of diamonds.

“Mike was a pack of Lucky Strike’s, a box of Whitman’s Chocolates and a pair of silk stockings all rolled into one. She was lunch at the Chili Bowl and dinner and a dance at the Cocoanut Grove. She was sleeping in on Saturdays so you could make love to her on white sheets with the roar of the ocean just down the beach. She was Hearst Castle and Coney Island and Hollywood Premieres. She was a car parked overlooking the Pacific while we necked and forgot about the million bucks sitting on the floorboard. She was diamonds in my pocket whose value was nothing next to her soft lips and the feel of her fingers on the back of my neck. She was the reason I’d fought so hard to make it back. She was what I’d hoped for, what every guy hoped for.”

John and Susan take off for Mexico with a million's worth of diamonds, accompanied by John's two service buddies and his lovely assistant Juanita, who "was prettier than Lupe Velez and could handle a gun or a client with equal ease".
And, so the adventure begins.

Bobby Underwood is a master of telling a good story full of intriguing adventure, romance, and scattered humor without a wasted word. That’s one of the main things I love about his writing. He can spin such a full and fun tale in a small amount of space. At just over a hundred pages, Beautiful Detour has the feel of a much larger novel, due to Underwood’s exceptional ability to smoothly weave in atmosphere with flawless dialogue. I put his writing in the same company as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. That’s some pretty good company.

WHERE FLAMINGOS FLY

It’s been quite a while since I had this much fun reading a novel. The last one I remember enjoying this much is this same author’s old-time Western novel, “Whisper Valley”. It’s amazing to me how one author can write two such amazing stories in totally different genres.
“Where Flamingos Fly” is a masterpiece of old-time noir fiction that reminds me of Raymond Chandler at his best. It has the delightful feel you get while watching one of those classic films of the ‘40s, like “The Glass Key”, “Key Largo”, and “The Big Sleep”.

Bobby Underwood does an unusual, but very cool thing at the beginning of this book. He gives a list of the characters, and names of actors and actresses of the ‘30s and ‘40s who would play their roles if it were a film. The cast he chose to represent his creations is perfect.

Picture Alan Ladd playing the lead as reporter Ed Sanderson. He’s not your typical reporter, being a fresh veteran of WWII, he owns a .45, and knows how to use it. He leaves his home in Chicago and settles in Miami, the place “where flamingos fly”, and stumbles on to a potential big story that originated from the murder of a Chicago mobster, and ends up in Miami when Ed spots the beautiful “Mystery girl”. In his pursuit of the story, he recruits the help of Anne, a fellow Chicago reporter he’s sweet on, but reluctantly left behind in the windy city.

“Anne was a very pretty blonde whose rear end or smile could stop traffic. She could easily have doubled for Priscilla Lane in the pictures.”

For anyone familiar with Frank Capra’s “Arsenic and Old Lace”, you can see why Underwood sees her playing his female lead.

Anne jumps at the chance to join Ed in Miami, and the adventure begins.

With additional help from an excellent cast of memorable characters who could be portrayed by such stars as James Craig, Phyllis Brooks, Gail Russell, Hugh Beaumont, and Dan Duryea, Ed and Anne find themselves up to their necks in danger from mobsters in the exotic and glamorous 1940s Miami. Underwood is a master bringing a time and place to life through his economical and sharp prose. He’s so historically accurate and precise with his descriptions, you feel like you’ve traveled back in time, and are a part of the action. The sights, sounds, and smells are interwoven so perfectly, you can feel the Miami sun and smell the salty air.

The dialogue is as good or better than any noir film I’ve ever seen, or any book of the same genre.
And, of course, there's romance! Few writers can match Underwood’s pure style in that regard. This guy could turn a Boris Karloff character into a romantic leading man.

Whether you’re a nostalgia buff, lover of noir, or just an old-fashion romantic, you owe it to yourself to read this fantastic novel.

NIGHTSIDE

This is the best noir mystery novel I’ve ever read. It reminds me of those great mystery/crime/detective films of the 1940s that I love. The narrator is a WWII captain who has become a private detective after the war. You can clearly see Alan Ladd telling you this tightly woven story as he sets out to find who murdered one of the men who was once under his command.

Underwood has written a masterpiece of the genre. It has all the pieces that make a great crime noir. The detective. The beautiful reporter. Mystery. Action. Gunfights. Gangsters. A little romance is a perfect addition to the plot, making this novel a fantastic addition to the genre.

It contains some of the best dialogue in print. Imagine the likes of such great actors from the era as Ladd, Veronica Lake, Gloria Graham, Lloyd Nolan, June Lockhart, William Bendix, and Hugh Beaumont delivering the lines from a perfectly written script, and you’ll get the feeling of how great this book is. Not only is the dialogue a breath of fresh air, but the descriptions of 1940s San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Catalina Island are so real, you’d think you were there. And, that’s just how I felt, especially about Catalina; I didn’t want this book to end. It was a magical place and time, and Bobby Underwood let me live in it for a while with this superbly written novel.

The hardback copy I own is a cherished possession. Its dynamic black and white cover accentuates the title. It’s an all-together beautiful piece of work, inside and out. ( )