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[edting]

35. The Black Hearts Murder by Ellery Queen

This book is odd. The main character, Mike McCall, is The Troubleshooter, a guy who fixes problems for the mayor. There are two other books in this series. The present volume concerns a murder during the race riots of the late ‘60s. The characters are unpleasant. Nearly all of them – black and white – are racist. Mike picks up women using the cheesiest lines imaginable. What this has to do with “Ellery Queen” I have no idea. The late EQ novels, even when they did not feature the Ellery Queen character, were at least consistent in tone and subject matter with the earlier books. This one isn’t a detective story so much as a bad caricature of The Mod Squad.

I’ve admired Richard Deming’s work in the past, but this one is just way off.

By the way, I just received two large boxes of Ellery Queen books off ebay. I’m sorting through them now. I’m pretty sure my revised totals are: 60/95 (63%) owned, and 29/95 (31%) read.

It’s getting harder to find those elusive titles without getting yet another copy of Dead Man’s Tale and The House of Brass. Anyone want them?

[jeffp]

Join paperbackswap.com, Ed, and you'll have an easy way to get rid of your duplicate books and get different things you want to read in exchange.

--jeffp