Goodey's last stand (Midnight novel of suspense)

By Charles Alverson

Book Overview

Hailed as ..".the next best thing to finding a new and unsuspected Raymond Chandler phantasmagoria" ("The New Yorker"), this hard boiled mystery novel for fans of John D. MacDonald, Robert Parker and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395206723
• ISBN13: 9780395206720
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Historically accurate?no Good book? yes

Books of this type should not be read with historical accuracy in mind. It's just a good Private eye yarn with a lot of action and Good looking "dames" with "great legs" running all over the place. I'd place it alongside Mike Hammer.

Time Slip

"I was right, wasn't I, Joe? You should have been a private dick all the time. You're a natural. Here you've had a private op's license a full six hours or so, and you're working overtime finding dead bodies, disappearing potential murderers and witnesses, bumping heads with detective sergeants all over the place. You've got the knack, boy." -Goodey's Last Stand This seeming one-off private eye novel makes for a disorienting reading experience. Mr. Alverson so consciously tries to evoke Chandler that it's hard at first to figure out when the story is supposed to be set--though in the end it turns out to be contemporary. Adding to one's confusion is the anomaly of hero Joe Goodey referring to blacks as spades, which even in 1975 was frowned upon. At any rate, Goodey is thrown off of the San Francisco police department after accidentally shooting the mayor's uncle, but is given an expedited private eye's license when a stripper he knew turns up dead, with the mayor's name in her little black book. Set in Chinatown and the red light district the book's long on atmosphere and makes for a decent enough homage to the classics of the genre.