Steve Mertz’s first book, way back in 1979, was a detective novel
called Some Die Hard (reviewed HERE).
Since then, over the course of his wild and woolly career, he’s pumped out more
than, sixty more books, ranging from men’s adventure to military action, political
thrillers, paranormal mystery, historical fiction, adult westerns, and even a
vampire novel.
Surprisingly, what he has not written, as far as I know, is another
detective novel. Until now.
Say it Was Murder is a return
to Steve’s roots, and based on the tag-line “A McShan Thriller,” appears to be
the first in a series. And that’s a good thing.
Good as Some Die Hard was
(and still is – it was reissued by Rough
Edges Press in 2014 and is available HERE), Steve has come a long way since then, and Say it Was Murder puts all his skills on
display. This novel is not only more hardboiled than the earlier book, it’s
more thoughtful, it’s funnier, and the characters are more fully developed. More
than anything, it reminds me of Ross Macdonalds’ early (and best) Lew Archer novels.
McShan, an “old school” detective in a smart phone age, is an unruly
operative of Honeycutt Personal Services. He’s assigned to what his boss, the
hawk-faced and hardboiled Agatha Honeycutt, calls “a misbehaving daughter job.”
Much of the deftly handed humor is in the repartee between McShan and Agatha.
He is unfailingly insubordinate, but gets away with it because he’s her best detective—and
because she just plain likes him.
McShan himself is a shaggy-haired incarnation of Mr. Mertz himself,
wearing boots, jeans, and a black t-shirt. And he’s operating on the author’s
home turf of Southern Arizona. The richly described territory is almost a
character in itself. We visit the old cowboy town of Bisbee, with it’s historic
Copper Queen Hotel, and his client is staying at The Tipi Lodge, where the rooms actually look like tipis. We also get the lowdown on rural bar crowds, the
mystery of the Anasazi, the role of Walmart in rural society, and an appreciation
of the temporary nature of civilization on the desert borderlands.
The cast includes characters who at first appear to be stereotypes of
mystery fiction—the leader of a religious cult, the abused wife of a brutal
jerk, the cop who works no harder than he has to, the mother who wants her girl
back, and the misbehaving daughter herself, who doesn’t seem to give a damn.
But as the story plays out, they are all revealed as more than they seem, and
grow into real people.
For fans of Steve’s “action specialist” past, there’s a good taste of
that, too, as McShan goes up against a behemoth biker babe who does her best to
stomp him into oblivion.
Put it all together and you get a great read, and the hope of more McShan
mysteries to come. Get yours HERE.
