Review: Wings in the Dark by Michael Murphy

wings in the dark by michael murphyFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: historical mystery
Series: Jake & Laura #3
Length: 214 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: July 14, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Witty and stylish in the classic Dashiell Hammett tradition, Michael Murphy’s latest high-flying Jake & Laura mystery features a Hawaiian honeymoon that’s interrupted when their friend Amelia Earhart is accused of murder.

Hawaii, 1935. Mystery novelist Jake Donovan and actress Laura Wilson are in gorgeous sun-soaked Hawaii, but their best-laid plans for canoodling on the beach are interrupted by a summons from famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart. It seems a local businessman has been gunned down next to her plane. In just days, the famous pilot intends to fly from Honolulu to Los Angeles, making aviation history over the Pacific. But now, without Jake and Laura’s help, Earhart’s flight might never take off.

Trailing a killer, the newlyweds’ sleuthing leads to a jealous pilot, a cigar-chomping female officer of the “Royalist Militia,” and a notoriously disagreeable lieutenant colonel named Patton. With a sinister killer lurking in the shadows, it’s safe to say the honeymoon is over . . . and the danger has just begun.

My Review:

Jake Donovan always tries to convince himself that whatever case he has walked, or in this case been strong-armed, into, it’s always going to be his last. For the good version of last, that he will have given up being a private detective and is now a full-time, and quite successful, author of hard-boiled mysteries.

His new wife Laura Winston is rightfully afraid that one of these cases will be his last, for the bad definition of last, that he’ll get himself killed. At the same time, Laura can’t help but get herself involved as well, partly to protect Jake, and partly because she can’t let go of the adrenaline rush either.

And Laura has plenty of adrenaline in her life already. She is a Broadway actress and Hollywood star. In 1935, the combined incomes of a successful movie star and a best-selling novelist put Jake and Laura into a lifestyle that is both a million miles away from their hardscrabble childhood in Queens, and far from the difficulties of life for so many people during the Great Depression.

A Depression which in 1935 shows no sign of ending.

This time it’s Jake’s career that gets them into trouble, not that Laura’s connections don’t have a hand in it as well.

Amelia Earhart c. 1935
Amelia Earhart c. 1935

Jake and Laura are in Hawaii for their honeymoon. Amelia Earhart is in Honolulu in preparation for her ground-breaking solo flight from Honolulu to California. But all is not smooth flying for the aviatrix, and she calls on her friend Laura and Laura’s husband Jake to investigate a murder that threatens to set back her scheduled flight.

Someone murdered one of Amelia’s Hawaiian backers in her hanger while she was sleeping in her plane. The police can’t decide whether Amelia is the killer or the real target, so Amelia’s influential husband strong-arms Jake into helping with the investigation.

The strong-arming was heavy-handed but very successful. Earhart’s husband George Putnam really was one of the Putnam’s of the publishing house G.P. Putnam’s. He just called Jake’s publisher and threatened to kill the man’s career if he didn’t cooperate.

While Putnam’s methods were very heavy-handed, they were necessary, because the plot to stop Amelia Earhart’s flight reached into some surprising and deadly places – and also struck all too close to home.

It’s up to Jake and Laura to protect Amelia, investigate the murder and find out both what the killer’s real agenda is and stop them before it is too late.

It’s not just the life of Amelia Earhart that’s at stake. This flight, if it is successful, has the potential to continue America’s fascination with and expansion of air travel. If it fails, aviation will go into a depression even deeper than the U.S. economic situation.

If the flight succeeds, Hawaii will become a vacation destination for mainlanders, both assisting and transforming the Islands’ economy. And if the flight succeeds, the U.S. Armed Forces will expand into air power and patrol the Pacific Ocean.

In 1935, there is a lot of interest in the Pacific Rim in stopping that expansion. At any cost.

yankee club by michael murphyEscape Rating B+: If you like historical mysteries set in the 20th century, or noir (kind of noir-lite) or stories where real history and real people are wrapped around a fun mystery, this series is an absolute hoot. Start with The Yankee Club (reviewed here) and take a trip back to a different time, where so much is different, and so much is the same.

Like The Yankee Club, Wings in the Dark is wrapped around some true historical events. Amelia Earhart really was in Honolulu in January of 1935, and this flight, with all its attendant hoopla, did take place. The implications of the flight were as they are in the book. Success meant an expansion of aviation, failure meant that aviation would die a quick and painful death.

We’ve seen this in recent history as well. Every time the U.S. Space Program suffers a disaster, there is a retrenchment and reconsideration, even though all the participants signed on for the risk of being among the first people “out there”.

The times in which Amelia’s ground-breaking flight took place are also an important part of the picture. Hawaii was part of the U.S., but there were still plenty of people alive who remembered the “good old days” of the monarchy. There is still loads of resentment at the way the U.S. managed to take possession of the Islands.

Then there’s the war. The one that hasn’t happened yet, but is certainly looming on the horizon for those who have eyes to see. One of those people with eyes is then Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton, who was stationed in Hawaii in 1935, mostly an exile in disgrace. Patton views the growing militarization of Japan with alarm, and fears that the Japanese military sees the potential rise of U.S. airpower as a threat to their hegemony.

The mystery in Wings in the Dark circles, and sometimes barrel-rolls, around the murder in Amelia’s hangar. At first, it seems like an inside job as well as a crime of passion. Amelia’s female mechanic (and aviation rival) was having an affair with the dead man. But not all of the pieces fit this scenario.

The dead man was an Islander who had thrown in his economic lot, very successfully, with the Americans. The Royalist fringe, including his own brother, were not happy with his plans for more American influence.

Jake is sure there’s more than meets the eye, and when Patton provides scanty but convincing details of a Japanese assassin operating in the Islands, Jake starts to believe that this case is much, much bigger than he thought.

Especially when his old friend, the American agent Landon Stoddard, shows up to stick the government’s oar in this particular choppy water. Whatever is going on, it is way bigger than a simple lover’s spat, no matter how deadly.

This is a case where the “who benefits?” question will have world-changing answers.

The fun part of these cases is always following Jake and Laura, and whomever they drag along in their wake. Any resemblance to Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett’s Thin Man series is strictly intentional. And an absolute blast.

wingsdarkbanner

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: All That Glitters by Michael Murphy + Giveaway

all that glitters by michael murphyFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: historical mystery
Series: Jake and Laura #2
Length: 266 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: January 6, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Just arrived from New York, Broadway actress Laura Wilson is slated to star in Hollywood’s newest screwball comedy. At her side, of course, is Jake Donovan, under pressure to write his next mystery novel. But peace and quiet are not to be had when an all-too-real murder plot intrudes: After a glitzy party, the son of a studio honcho is discovered dead from a gunshot wound. And since Jake exchanged words with the hothead just hours before his death, the bestselling author becomes the LAPD’s prime suspect.

In 1930s Tinseltown, anything goes. Proving his innocence won’t be easy in a town where sex, seduction, and naked power run rampant. With gossip columnist Louella Parsons dead-set on publicizing the charges against him, Jake has no choice but to do what everyone else does in the City of Angels: act like someone else. Blackie Doyle, the tough-talking, fist-swinging, womanizing hero from Jake’s novels wouldn’t pull any punches until he exposed the real killer—nor will Jake, to keep the role of a lifetime from being his last.

My Review:

The Jake & Laura series is tremendously fun, especially if you like 20th century historical mysteries, and/or if you like stories where the fictional creations interact with real people.

The thing about using the 20th century as a setting for any type of historical fiction is that even if the reader doesn’t personally remember the era, it is close enough in time that we knew people who did, or at least that some of the icons of the time live in the public consciousness. We feel that we are familiar with the ancillary characters, even if we don’t know the details. And that we associate certain people with certain eras helps fix the story in time in a way that bare historical details may not.

The_Jazz_Singer_1927_PosterIn this particular case, Jake & Laura go to Hollywood in the relatively early days of the “Talkies”. The Jazz Singer, the first feature film presented as a talkie, premiered in 1927. Hollywood was still feeling the echoes, as acting careers, producers, directors and studios were still suffering the fallout. The Great Depression, which brought record numbers of viewers to theaters for cheap, escapist entertainment, also made it difficult for studios to pay back their loans on the expensive new equipment needed for sound.

Jake and Laura have arrived at a Hollywood in the midst of change, but still the Hollywood that is now legend, where starlets were discovered at street-corner diners, and speakeasies catered to the rich and/or famous. It was also the early days of the “studio system” where stars and wannabees signed up to have their public life controlled by the studios’ star-making publicity machine.

Laura is a successful Broadway actress, but she has come to Hollywood to star in a screwball comedy as the ingenue. It’s a role that will make her career in movies, if the picture ever gets made. But Laura is supposed to be the star, and Jake Donovan is supposed to hang around and finish his latest novel. The trip is also a test of their recently rekindled relationship.

Nothing works out the way it is supposed to.

Jake has been in Hollywood before, but the last time he was in LA, it was when he was working as a Pinkerton with Dashiell Hammett. Jake, like Hammett, is a detective-turned-novelist, and Hammett has been singing his praises on both fronts. So when Laura’s picture needs some tightening in the screenwriting, Jake is drafted against his will. As usual, he’s protecting Laura, and equally usually, he doesn’t tell her why he is suddenly involved in something she didn’t want him near.

Then there’s a death (of course there is) and Jake is in it up to his neck. He may not be guilty, but he certainly looks guilty. He needs to find the real killer before the scandal murders his writing career, and more importantly, Laura’s big chance in Hollywood.

Because in the Depression, Jake knows that they are only one or two paychecks away from disaster. Unless he ends up in prison, which will be more disaster than anyone can handle.

Escape Rating B+: The title, of course, is meant to recall the famous quote, “All that glitters is not gold”. Most of what glitters in Hollywood is tinsel, although it could equally be said to be pyrite, or “fool’s gold”. The point is that under all the glitter, there is a lot of fakery. Also a lot of people chase the gold of Hollywood, only to discover that the metal they mined isn’t gold after all.

The other version of this saying is also true, “All that is gold does not glitter”. Jake and Laura, their relationship and their core selves, is gold and true, even if they do suffer some knocks along the way. But then, real gold is a relatively soft metal, and it’s easy to dent or shape, yet it is resistant to corrosion, as, in the end, are Jake and Laura.

While the mystery in this story turns out to be a relatively simple case of “Who Benefits?” there are plenty of red herrings to steer Jake off course and keep the reader entertained. You are pretty sure who it has to be, but it takes a convoluted time for the evidence to be revealed (and/or discredited).

200px-William_Powell_and_Myrna_Loy_in_Another_Thin_Man_trailerOne of the fun things about this series is the way that Laura and Jake interact with the luminaries of Hollywood in the 1930s. Jake knew Dashiell Hammett, the author of The Thin Man books, which became a movie series starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. William Powell appears as an important secondary character in All The Glitters. This is made even more fun (and slightly recursive) that Jake and Laura are intended to be a slightly more down to earth Nick and Nora Charles. (Hammett modeled Nick and Nora on himself and his lover Lillian Hellman)

yankee club by michael murphyThe Thin Man series is also a comedy of manners hidden in a mystery (and vice versa) and so are the Jake and Laura stories. Art imitates life imitates art imitates life, with just as terrific results as the first book in this series, The Yankee Club (reviewed here). You don’t have to read Yankee Club in order to enjoy All That Glitters, but it’s probably just that much more fun if you do.

 

 

 

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Michael and TLC Book Tours are giving away a $25 Gift Card plus a copy of the first book in the Jake and Laura series, The Yankee Club, to one lucky winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Yankee Club by Michael Murphy + Giveaway

yankee club by michael murphyFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Historical mystery
Series: Jake and Laura Mystery, #1
Length: 264 pages
Publisher: Alibi
Date Released: August 12, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

In 1933, America is at a crossroads: Prohibition will soon be history, organized crime is rampant, and President Roosevelt promises to combat the Great Depression with a New Deal. In these uncertain times, former-Pinkerton-detective-turned-bestselling-author Jake Donovan is beckoned home to Manhattan. He has made good money as the creator of dashing gumshoe Blackie Doyle, but the price of success was Laura Wilson, the woman he left behind. Now a Broadway star, Laura is engaged to a millionaire banker—and waltzing into a dangerous trap.

Before Jake can win Laura back, he’s nearly killed—and his former partner is shot dead—after a visit to the Yankee Club, a speakeasy dive in their old Queens neighborhood. Suddenly Jake and Laura are plunged into a conspiracy that runs afoul of gangsters, sweeping from New York’s private clubs to the halls of corporate power and to the White House itself. Brushing shoulders with the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Cole Porter, and Babe Ruth, Jake struggles to expose an inconspicuous organization hidden in plain sight, one determined to undermine the president and change the country forever.

My Review:

The Yankee Club is an actual baseball bat, signed by the New York Yankees in 1933.

It’s also the name of a speakeasy in New York that Jake Donovan used to call his home away from home, before he ran away from his problems and holed up in Tampa.

Coming back to the city doesn’t just force him to face everything and everyone he walked away from, it turns him back into the detective he used to be, for one last case.

And what a case it is! The story starts with Jake discovering that the girl he left behind has gotten herself engaged to a rich banker, and his best friend and former partner gets himself gunned down right outside their old offices–leaving Jake as a wounded witness with a promise to keep.

At first, the case seems simple enough, in motive if not in execution. Jake sets out to find out who murdered his old partner. It seems like a mob hit, and ought to be solvable when Jake goes out and barges in on his old friends; and his old enemies.

Nothing is ever that simple. As Jake delves deeper into the case, he discovers that his friend (and his ex-girlfriend) are secretly working for the government. The conspiracy that Jake uncovers could end with the overthrow of the government and change the face of history forever.

There’s no question that it’s probably going to get him killed. His only question is whether he can get the job done, and save the girl. Jake has to channel the private detective who stars in his mystery novels to have even a chance at saving the day.

Escape Rating B+: The Yankee Club has a very definite noir feel to it. The story takes place in the middle of the Depression, at a point where Prohibition was still very much in force. The city has mean streets, and too many people with mean attitudes and guns hidden away. Nothing says noir quite like guys with tommy guns in suitcases prowling the streets.

Everyone involved has a murky past (or present). Both the good guys and the bad. They all grew up in part of Queens that was rough, and they’ve all learned a lot from the school of hard knocks.

Jake has been using his less than savory origins as fodder for his Blackie Doyle detective series. His ex-girlfriend, Laura, learned to act while pretending that her father wasn’t beating her every week. Gino always “knows a guy who knows a guy” and pays off corrupt cops to keep his speakeasy open.

But at least their faults are honest. It’s the rich bankers who are shameful, in spite of their squeaky clean origins.

Someone tried to kill FDR before his inauguration, as a way of preventing the New Deal from taking place. (This part really happened) Now that he’s in office, they’re even more committed to stopping any policy that might help people dig out of the Depression, because they are on the “right” side of the “haves vs. have nots” equation.

The elaborate conspiracy feels all too real for the time period when this story takes place.

Jake and Laura remind me a bit of the characters from The Thin Man — a couple who find themselves solving crimes together. It’s an appropriate fit as well. Dashiell Hammett (and Lillian Hellman) are among the many historical characters who provide the period ambiance for The Yankee Club. While there was a point early on where the intermix of historical figures felt a bit like name-dropping, as the story continues they make the story “fit” into its time and place in a way that fictional characters might not.

I very much enjoyed this glimpse into the era of Babe Ruth, Hoovervilles and private eyes. I’m looking forward to the next book in the Jake and Laura series, All That Glitters. I can’t help but wonder what sort of fool’s gold, or just what kind of fool, they will be tangling with next.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

As part of The Yankee Club Tour, Alibi Publishing is generously giving away a $25 Gift Card to the etailer of the winner’s choice!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.