MURDER IN THE WINGS -- Ed Gorman

Were I Police Detective Edelman and I had the faded TV star Stephen Wade in my custody I'd lock him up, close the case and take a long, well-deserved vacation. This is one murder rap not even my buddy Jack Dwyer--former cop, now private eye and sometime actor—is going to upend, believe me.

I mean, look. Let's be realistic here. Wade's fingerprints are all over the knife that's buried in Michael Reeves's back. Okay? Need more? Opportunity: A reliable witness sees Wade enter Reeves's apartment around the time of the murder. Motive? Hours earlier Reeves had shoved, slapped and humiliated Wade in front of the rest of the cast of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night following Wade's drunken bumbling, stumbling, mumbling performance. Reeves directed the production and is the local theater's resident director.

One might think even Jack Dwyer would let this one go, especially considering the victim was not a likable guy. Somewhat of a loathsome guy, actually. The kind of guy who probably had it coming anyway. But, then, Jack Dwyer's not the kind of guy who gives up easily. Not the kind, either, to rush to judgment, no matter how loathsome it might be to keep an open mind.

One suspects Ed Gorman was a Dwyer kind of guy. He created Jack Dwyer and used this quote by the late British author Gerald Kersh to introduce Murder in the Wings, our currently discussed Dwyer mystery: ". . . there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armor, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment."

In Murder in the Wings, Jack Dwyer neither hates the man charged with murder nor has to look for any chinks in his armor. There is no armor. Stephen Wade is himself writhing in torment, destroying his career and his life with drink. He is also Dwyer's friend. Dwyer was one of the cast members in this disastrous performance of O'Neill's classic play. He restrained the actor after a fight broke out between the two enraged men. It was Dwyer whom Wade called, in a drunken stupor, from Reeves's apartment where he said he found his tormentor lying face down in bed with a knife protruding between his shoulder blades.

Nope. No way Jack Dwyer is going to let this one go. Not even after Wade admits he isn't positive he didn't stab the loathsome director to death. Not even after he waves a .45 at Dwyer and flees sobbing into the night. Dwyer couldn't let this one go if he wanted to, if only because his lovably flaky girlfriend, Donna Harris, has decided that “sweet” Stephen Wade did not—could not—murder anyone, not even someone as loathsome as Michael Reeves.

Besides, taking a closer look one sees there are plenty of folks, in the theater group alone, with motive, opportunity and means to have done the dirty deed.

Ed Gorman was at the top of his game with this novel. The writing is crisp and insightful, with moments of pure poetic joy. His characters are so real you feel you know them, or would like to. His plotting is intricate and daring. He keeps you guessing right up to the eminently satisfying denouement.

And the humor. Oh, mercy. It sneaks up and gooses you when you least expect it. There seems always to be a scene or two in every Gorman novel that sets me to laughing so hard I worry I will not be able to stop. Or that the neighbors will call 911. This time, about halfway through Murder in the Wings, I grabbed my cell phone thinking I might need to make the call myself.

Turns out I didn't. But I was ready.

[find more Friday's Forgotten Books links at Todd Mason's amazingly eclectic blog]

 

Missing Ed Gorman

I was in bed June 19, 2005 when I became Sam McCain. It happened during a flash of magic, one of those unpredictable windows in the space-time continuum one reads about in certain kinds of fantasy fiction. Had I been reading Metamorphosis during that bewitched, cosmic shift you might at this moment be reading combinations of only h and i and s to represent the hissing sounds I presume Kafka’s central character might produce. Thankfully no magic window opened when I read Metamorphosis, not like the one with Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, a mystery novel featuring the aforementioned Sam McCain, whom I became instead of Kafka’s humble dung beetle. I don’t mind admitting this, that I became the fictional lawyer/private eye, in part because the character I was reading about, an engaging little Irishman, himself admits to a cross-identity assumption, that he secretly believes he’s Robert Ryan, the tall, strapping movie actor.

  Mixed up, mysteried up, shook up world, to play with Lou Reed's little ditty about a fellow who became a gal named Lola. Oh, there's no Lola in any of the ten Sam McCain mysteries. Straight as can be in that sense. Not that I as McCain nor McCain himself—even in his secret Robert Ryan persona, presumably--would have found anything wrong had any of the plots been muddled that way! That which I've read of Ed Gorman's phenomenal literary canon, celebrates hope in a world seen with unblinking yet tender clarity no matter how jinxed the view. It was my sense of this vision at the start of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow that grabbed me after setting me up with the epigraph:

 

I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen. —W. H. Auden

Then:

“GEE,” THE BEAUTIFUL PAMELA Forrest said. “He actually looks kinda dopey.”

And he did.

Here he was, the world’s first nuclear-powered bogeyman, and he looked like the uncle everybody feels sorry for because he’s fat and sloppy.

Nikita Khrushchev. Premier of the Soviet Union. The world’s number one Russian. Not to mention Communist.

Athough I did not know at this point it was Sam McCain speaking, already I was him—if only to enjoy his proximity to "the beautiful Pamela Forrest." Little did I know how frustrating this proximity would prove to be for both McCain and me as I worked my way through the McCain saga. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow is the second in the series. I read it first, not having any knowledge of McCain or Ed Gorman, because it was a Father's Day gift from my wife. She had inscribed it sweetly, hinting that perhaps I would enjoy reading it "while cruising to Bermuda." I couldn't wait for the cruise, which came later, so my initiation to the Sam McCain phenomenon, which led to a treasured friendship with his creator, came landlocked next to the woman whose thoughtful gift had introduced us, and who too was reading during our habitual read-before-sleep time, which, in retrospect, might otherwise have been spent more wisely, as the title's yearning question no longer for us begs a fortuitous answer. Happier exponentially answering the question more directly: the immediate tomorrow of my discovering Ed Gorman has come and gone but I cannot begin to imagine, no matter how many tomorrows I may have left, answering that question any other way than Hell Yes!

Thinking back, it occurs to me there probably was no magic flash that turned me into Sam McCain that fateful eve. At least not in a fantasy physics sense, as Ed Gorman, whose oeveure includes science fiction as well as westerns, noir, horror, and genres I'm likely forgetting, would have told me. Too modest to admit it, though, he'd merely have flashed a leprechaun grin at the suggestion it was his storytelling sleight of hand alone that made the magic. And then he'd have reminded me of the things McCain and I had in common: McCain practiced law and worked as an investigator for the local judge in his hometown, the fictional Black River Falls, Iowa; my dad practiced law in our small Wisconsin town where I was a high school senior when Krushchev visited Roswell Garst's Iowa farm. The detective part? I'd been reading detective novels from the time I discovered them in the little bookcase my dad kept near his favorite chair in our living room. Ed Gorman captured me by capturing the mood and the feel of a small prairie town and its people. Especially Sam McCain, whom, had I not grown up to be a mild-mannered newspaper reporter (sans tights and cape), might well have had a career quite like that of my fictional alter ego.

McCain is not my father's detective type. He's neither the classic hard-boiled nor cozy mystery solver. Were he Jewish he'd be describing himself what in Yiddish is called a schlemiel, a chump. But that is just his modest way of self-appraisal. In truth he's a smart, tough little guy who can face his fears, handle himself, and get the job done. He doesn't often get the girl, although not for lack of trying (see opening reference to "the beautiful Pamela Forrest"). He loves his sister (I have one, too) and his parents. One description of his dad, in the first book of the series—The Day the Music Died—is so honest and poignant it chokes my throat up with each reading:

I still remember standing on the platform at the train depot and watching my dad wave to us when he came home from World War II. I was shocked. My parents are small people. My mom is five-two and has never cleared ninety pounds. But I’d grown up with my mom and was used to her size. My dad was a different matter. I’d seen a lot of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan— two of the many brave movie stars who hadn’t actually gone to war— war movies, and so I just figured my dad would be this big heroic kind of guy, too. He’d been gone a long time. Well, he wasn’t big and heroic-looking. In fact, he looked like a kid. He was five-six and weighed maybe 130 and had dishwater blond hair. His khaki uniform looked too big for him, gave him a vulnerability that made him seem even less soldierly. He was an utter stranger to me. The last time I’d seen him I’d been seven years old. I felt sort of ashamed of him, actually, how young and vulnerable he looked in the midst of all these other towering GIs. Why couldn’t I have a dad who looked like Robert Mitchum? And I’ve always been ashamed of myself for feeling that. I know that when I see him in his coffin over at the Fitzpatrick Funeral Home, that’s what I’ll think of, *how I betrayed him in my heart that first day he came back from the war.

And this, lest there be any doubt about our (McCain's and my) political leanings:

Dad had all the insecurities that go along with being a small and somewhat delicate man. But instead of using them to hate or bully, he’d turned them into empathy and wisdom. He always watched the CBS Evening News with Douglas Edwards and watched what the white cops were doing to black people trying to ride whites-only city buses. Stuff like that got to him as much as it did me. Even my mom, who didn’t vote because she hated all politicians equally, had tears in her eyes when she saw little Negro kids blasted off the streets with fire hoses and their parents clubbed to their knees.

The McCain series is set in the years 1959-71, with their pop-song titles corresponding to the times of the stories. The first one, The Day the Music Died, begins on the day commemorated by Don McLean’s eponymous song, when a plane carrying rock ‘n’ roll stars Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, killng all aboard.

The novel opens with Sam McCain and “the beautiful Pamela Forrest” driving home from the group’s final performance at Clear Lake.

McCain isn’t one of those fictional characters who never ages despite a series span of decades. His finale, Riders on the Storm, has him recently returning home from a five-month hospital stint after a drunken jeep accident when he was a National Guardsman. He’s lost some of his smartalecky edge. In fact, well, let’s let him tell us:

 

I top a small hill and gaze down at the moonlit homes stretching out before me. Senators love to bluster about how the rest of the world envies us, and when you see this portrait in shadow and light you have to agree with them. Solid houses, good jobs, bright futures. Too bad we were losing thousands of our troops— not to mention even more thousands of innocents— just so two fine fellows named Johnson and Nixon could play John Wayne…

This was the seventies. I indulged in liquor, grass and sex. I’d lost my religious faith, I’d lost most of my faith in the political system and I knew how corrupt our system of justice was. And if I had to sit down and count up the number of lies I’d told in my life, a fair share to women I’d cared about, I would be one hundred and thirty-four before I could stand up again.

Sam McCain died 17 days ago, along with the man who gave him the life he shared with me. Ed Gorman promised me several months ago in the last email I got from him that another McCain novel was in the works. I kinda knew better, because Ed had been seriously ill during the years I came to know him after that auspicious Father’s Day 11 years ago. A type of cancer known as multiple myeloma finally killed him. I was never blessed with the honor and the pleasure of meeting him in person, or even speaking with him on the phone. But there was never any doubt he was a friend—from our first exchange of emails. And dammit now he’s gone for good, and so is Sam McCain. 

 

ELIMINATION – Ed Gorman

When I was in high school my dad ran in the Democratic primary for a state senate seat. I was his campaign manager. We didn't have any money and I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and we got the crap kicked out of us. If we'd had money we could have hired someone like Dev Conrad. I would have been out of a job but my dad might have had a fighting chance--even if someone had tried to murder him.

Dev Conrad's the kind of consultant you want running your campaign especially if the race is so hot people try to kill your candidate. He's an ex-Army investigator and a second-generation political op and, unfortunately, only a fictional character. But his creator, novelist Ed Gorman, himself a former political speechwriter and TV producer, knows the game and the milieu so well his main character could step straight out of the novel’s pages and take a seat opposite Hardball interviewer Chris Matthews.

Dev's also a political operative of the sort that would take some of the stigma from politics in a day when sleaze, suspicion and scandal have become the norm. Don’t get me wrong, he's tough enough, and wily to boot. Talking about the ops working for his candidate's opponent, he says, "They’d be telling the same kind of lies I usually did. Just earning their paychecks."

His self-effacing humor is a welcome grace. There's this: "God had personally given me a daily allotment of one hundred and twenty-three lies. I was, after all, in politics."

At the same time, he allows his pragmatism to take him only so far. He’s a decent sort. The filthy political arena is where he makes his living, and he is good at it, but there are lines he will not cross. It's his honoring these limits that ultimately makes Dev Conrad a man worth honoring. And it helps that he prefers to work for candidates of a liberal bent.

In Elimination, he's signed on to run the campaign of a congresswoman in a tight race for reelection. Her opponent is a yahoo with a stinking rich uncle who is pouring a fortune into the campaign to send the incumbent home. She's being bombarded with all of the standard right-wing accusations and threats, and this assault is shrinking her lead in the polls the way big money always buys the minds of the shallowest voters, who always also tend to be the loudest. And the most dangerous.

Ed Gorman

Two wingnuts even show up at a crucial debate carrying AK-47 military rifles. Dev's candidate kicks the pus out of her moron opponent in the debate, but someone takes a couple of shots at her afterward. She's uninjured, and the resulting public sympathy shoots her lead back up to a margin of safety that virtually guarantees victory. Then the local police chief holds a surprise news conference and claims a rifle has been found in the trunk of a volunteer worker for Dev's candidate.

Faster than you can say “turnaround” the poll gap quickly narrows amid widespread talk that the “assassination” attempt was staged, presumably by the candidate herself.

Dev Conrad's job now is to find out what really happened. Calling upon his old training as an Army investigator, he soon learns the police chief and a small group of his officers are dedicated supporters of the right-wing candidate, and have some secrets of their own.

Complicating things is the candidate's husband, a vainglorious womanizer who thinks he knows more about running a campaign than the professional his wife has hired to do it.

The action is taut, fast-paced and fraught with surprises.

Elimination is the fourth in Gorman's Dev Conrad series, which promises to enjoy a run at least as long as his ten-book Sam McCain lawyer/detective series. Then there's his Jack Dwyer detective series. Yes, it is safe to say Gorman is prolific. Award-winning, too. He's copped the Shamus, Anthony, Ellery Queen, Spur and international fiction awards, and has been on the short list twice for an Edgar and once for the Silver Dagger.

Am I a fan? Well, let's just say I sure could have used me some Dev Conrad advice when I tried to manage my dad's disastrous run for a state senate nomination back in the day.

[for more Friday's Forgotten Books check the links on Patti Abbott's unforgettable blog]

DEAD MAN'S GUN – Ed Gorman

Nearly every genre is more respectable than the western. So says Ed Gorman in this collection of a few of his western stories. [pause for readers who want a moment to scratch their heads] He goes on: But what foolish snobbery that is...the modern western is just as good, and many times better, than any other type of modern fiction. Unfortunately, not enough modern readers—or editors—know this yet.

I could name some of the authors and their works Gorman lists as examples, but we're here to talk about the stories in this collection, which make his point equally well.

Admittedly I lean toward the snob side in the respectability equation of western fiction, knowing better but unable to completely shake the yippee ki-yay sense I've carried from boyhood of blazing sixguns, flaming arrows, and inevitable battles between the white hats and the black. In fact, the boy in me identifies poignantly with “Bromley,” the writer of westerns in “Pards,” one of my favorite stories in Dead Man's Gun. The tale concludes with me marveling at Gorman's deftly droll wit, which, with his generous heart and narrative mastery, leaves me with a pang of sympathy for the two main characters who in less-skilled hands likely would have come off as ridiculous.

This heart of Gorman's beats strongly throughout the collection. Human decency at odds with its opposite rules the range of these stories, although the distinction is rarely as obvious as the symbolism of hats. Bad guys and good guys alike can give us pause in our judgment of how best to navigate life's fickle rapids. If there's a common theme that threads through Dead Man's Gun it might be that it ain't always easy being human. I came to this collection not for nostalgia or the vicarious freedom of wide prairies or whiffs of gunsmoke, but because it includes a story I'd heard about called “The Face.”

The Autumn Dead [book report]

No doubt serious scholars of Ed Gorman's extensive literary oeuvre would sniff, or even snicker, were I to suggest that Sam McCain was conceived at least twelve years before The Day the Music Died. I hate being subjected to academic scorn. This is why I would never suggest that arguably Gorman's most popular character became a gleam in its creator's mind's eye sometime during the writing of The Autumn Dead.

It is irrelevant, I would contend, that The Autumn Dead is only the penultimate Jack Dwyer novel in Gorman's debut mystery series. The Cry of Shadows comes out two years later, in 1990. But it's in The Autumn Dead that the Dwyer of the series' first three novels begins to reveal an evolving persona. One that will emerge a dozen years down the road to launch a ten-book run as lawyer/PI Sam McCain.

Additional evidence is the setting of The Autumn Dead, more defined than in the earlier novels: a small Midwestern town, unnamed, but with features strikingly similar to McCain's Black River Falls, Iowa.

There are finer details that would fit neatly into a comparison were that my aim here. I'll mention only one, the one that brings The Autumn Dead closest to the McCain novels in its effect on me. The one that left my heart aching with bittersweet memories long after I finished reading. The one that took me back to my own youth when dreams held real promise and disappointments seemed mere bumps along the Yellow Brick Road to a magical future.

Jack Dwyer trips back to those days from a vantage filled with reminders there is no magic behind the curtain in youthful dreams. A former high school flame prompts his journey in time when she appears out of the blue needing his help. She dies in his arms while dancing at their twenty-fifth class reunion. He soon learns she likely was murdered and that others of their former schoolmates could be involved. An ex-policeman, Dwyer sets out to learn what happened.

The Autumn Dead is the darkest and most violent of the four Dwyer books I have read (The Cry of Shadows is inexplicably out of print), and its violence exceeds any of the McCain novels. In fact it's the most violent of anything I've read by Gorman.

The writing is superb, as always, with the first-person narrator's signature self-deprecating humor and compassionate outlook. Dwyer's approach in confrontations is carrot/stick, with the stick always a last resort.

Gorman's characters are never uninteresting. While some appear initially as caricatures all reveal complexities enough that any one of them is plausibly capable of virtually anything. Not unlike real life.

Murder in the Wings [book report]

Were I Police Detective Edelman and I had the faded TV star Stephen Wade in my custody I'd lock him up, close the case and take a long, well-deserved vacation. This is one murder rap not even my buddy Jack Dwyer--former cop, now private eye and sometime actor—is going to upend, believe me.

I mean, look. Let's be realistic here. Wade's fingerprints are all over the knife that's buried in Michael Reeves's back. Okay? Need more? Opportunity: A reliable witness sees Wade enter Reeves's apartment around the time of the murder. Motive? Hours earlier Reeves had shoved, slapped and humiliated Wade in front of the rest of the cast of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night following Wade's drunken bumbling, stumbling, mumbling performance. Reeves directed the production and is the local theater's resident director.

One might think even Jack Dwyer would let this one go, especially considering the victim was not a likable guy. Somewhat of a loathsome guy, actually. The kind of guy who probably had it coming anyway. But, then, Jack Dwyer's not the kind of guy who gives up easily. Not the kind, either, to rush to judgment, no matter how loathsome it might be to keep an open mind.

One suspects Ed Gorman is a Dwyer kind of guy. He created Jack Dwyer and used this quote by the late British author Gerald Kersh to introduce Murder in the Wings, our currently discussed Dwyer mystery: ". . . there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armor, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment."

In Murder in the Wings, Jack Dwyer neither hates the man charged with murder nor has to look for any chinks in his armor. There is no armor. Stephen Wade is himself writhing in torment, destroying his career and his life with drink. He is also Dwyer's friend. Dwyer was one of the cast members in this disastrous performance of O'Neill's classic play. He restrained the actor after a fight broke out between the two enraged men. It was Dwyer whom Wade called, in a drunken stupor, from Reeves's apartment where he said he found his tormentor lying face down in bed with a knife protruding between his shoulder blades.

Nope. No way Jack Dwyer is going to let this one go. Not even after Wade admits he isn't positive he didn't stab the loathsome director to death. Not even after he waves a .45 at Dwyer and flees sobbing into the night. Dwyer couldn't let this one go if he wanted to, if only because his lovably flaky girlfriend, Donna Harris, has decided that “sweet” Stephen Wade did not—could not—murder anyone, not even someone as loathsome as Michael Reeves.

Besides, taking a closer look one sees there are plenty of folks, in the theater group alone, with motive, opportunity and means to have done the dirty deed.

Ed Gorman's at the top of his game with this novel. His writing is crisp and insightful, with moments of pure poetic joy. His characters are so real you feel you know them, or would like to. His plotting is intricate and daring. He keeps you guessing right up to the eminently satisfying denouement.

And the humor. Oh, mercy. It sneaks up and gooses you when you least expect it. There seems always to be a scene or two in every Gorman novel that sets me to laughing so hard I worry I will not be able to stop. Or that the neighbors will call 911. This time, about halfway through Murder in the Wings, I grabbed my cell phone thinking I might need to make the call myself.

Turns out I didn't. But I was ready.

Murder Straight Up [book report]

Reading an Ed Gorman mystery is like sipping beer in a quiet bar with a good buddy while he tells you about his latest adventure.

Thus far I've enjoyed the adventures of three such Gorman buddies. My wife introduced me to Ed Gorman's writing with the Father's Day gift of a Sam McCain novel in 2005. The title, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, turned out to be ironic, as she and I, despite her inscription answering Carole King's musical question in the affirmative, are no longer together.

But my relationship with Gorman is still going strong. I've read all ten Sam McCain nostalgia mysteries and all five Dev Conrad political mysteries. I've read his debut novel, Rough Cut, which one publisher mistakenly says is the first Jack Dwyer mystery. It's not, technically, although the narrator's voice does sound awfully familiar. First of the four official Jack Dwyers is New Improved Murder. I'm here to talk about the second, Murder Straight Up.

This adventure starts off on the wrong foot. Dwyer is working the night shift as a security guard at KLRD-TV, Channel 3. He's on the second floor making his rounds when his flashlight dies. Suddenly he's groping blindly and bumping his knees in a room that's “slightly darker...than in Richard Nixon’s mind.” I include the quote as a sample of Gorman's humor and political proclivity—a fair warning for Trump chumps to jump off now or strap in for the ride. There are more bumps ahead.

It's not a bump that sends Dwyer's heart a'thumping, however, but a scrape against an uncarpeted section of flooring “somewhere to my right.”

Several heavy heartbeats later the chase is on. In the dark. The perp gets away, down a fire escape into the rainy fog. Dwyer curses, notifies the police, notifies the security agency that employs him, and notifies the TV station's building manager. Then he takes a break.

He's in the station's coffee room eating a Ho-Ho, drinking a Pepsi and flirting with Kelly Ford, Channel 3's news consultant, when suddenly Ford says, “Straight up.” This means it's ten o'clock. The night news show is about to begin. The two of them turn to the monitor to watch it live. It is then, immediately following the opening sequence as the number two camera fixes on news anchor David Curtis, that Dwyer and Ford see the anchor get an odd look on his face. He grabs at his throat, mouth foaming, stands up, and then collapses face down across his desk. Dead.

No doubt it's murder. Some at the station hold Dwyer responsible. A plumber had left the rear door unlocked, but Dwyer should have caught it. Knowing his job is at stake he turns detective. His digging turns up the prowler's identity, a troubled teen with a possible motive. Police arrest and charge the teen, but Dwyer believes he didn't do it. There are too many other plausible suspects, most of them Curtis's colleagues at Channel 3.

Dwyer's not your typical rent-a-cop with delusions of grandeur. He was a cop, for real, a job he left to try his hand as an actor. His night job buys groceries and pays the rent. The acting? Well, let's just say our boy is still preparing for his breakout role. He auditions days and lands the occasional commercial job.

He's the most human of any detective I've seen in crime fiction. He talks like I do, using language assuredly inappropriate here, but fine for a novel. I would have to use a lot of ***s and @#$%&%$#@s to give you excerpts from Murder Straight Up. During a car chase, for example, Dwyer complains that his bladder is causing him a certain anxiety.

Here's a partial from that scene I can give you without the euphemistic symbols: I had the terrible uncomfortable feeling that I was going to wet my pants, and I was shaking so bad from nerves that even the soles of my feet were wet. Human.

Here he is consoling a burly truck driver upset over a fatal accident he believes was his fault: “Goddammit, he’s f**kin’ dead!” the driver said. He was obviously a good man, and this was all bullshit he didn’t deserve. “It’ll be all right. You weren’t responsible in any way. All right?” “He’s f**kin’ dead?” This is not an uncommon reaction at traffic accidents. Shock and guilt. We’re a lot more fragile than the macho boys let on. I patted him on the shoulder again. I didn’t know what else to do. The siren was drawing nearer.

There is some fine humor in Murder Straight Up, as there is in most of Gorman's stuff I have read. I laughed so hard reading one scene I worried the neighbors might call 911. A couple of killers attack Dwyer on the rooftop balcony of a building where he has an “acting” job reading promotional hype at a gun show. A team of survivalists from the show arrives to “rescue” him. Shots are fired. Many shots. Eventually many police arrive. The ensuing conversation between the police commander and the gun show manager...well, I don't want to give anything away here. But if it doesn't make you laugh you sure as hell could use another beer.