If you read enough of the Chester Drum series, sooner or later you will feel as if you have explored all of Europe and South America without stepping on a plane. Marlowe was an intrepid traveler and he filled his books with the sights, sounds, and tastes of the exotic lands he favored. Drum is as cynical and hardboiled as any American detective, but Marlowe takes his detective and plops him all over the world for his adventures. These novels are punctuated by great writing with lots of action.

“Peril Is My Pay” is the 12th of the 20 Drum novels and it is a terrific read, but they all are. This one, however, doesn’t begin with an ordinary case in or around Washington D.C. Rather, it begins in Rome as the Olympic teams are preparing for the games only a week away. It takes Drum through the piazzas of Rome, the trattorias, the Spanish steps, and involves him a case involving Olympic athletes, possible Czech defectors, the Communists racing around to stop defections, a mad artist who does it with mirrors, an international smuggler who Drum had captured years earlier, and a collection of odd characters.

The story also may begin in Rome, but it also takes Drum into the heart of France and Germany, from medieval festivals to Hamburg’s mudwrestling and topless horseback riding nightclubs.
At times, the plot and the motivations of the various characters gets a bit convoluted, but the story is so filled with action and shoot-outs and fights and crosses and doublecrosses that it really doesn’t matter.

If you are looking for a hardboiled adventure novel with international intrigue like a James Bond story, you can’t do any better than this yarn. This is pure good stuff, indeed. ( )