Garnett Elliott

In the post-WW2 world, some returned home and found it hard to settle down in one place. Jack Laramie was one such person. Obtaining his PI license, he traveled around the great state of Texas finding jobs wherever he went, operating out of a horse trailer. Often, he sort of stumbles into jobs. In this selection from Laramie's grand adventures, we are treated to two entirely different adventures, one from early in his career and one from late in his career when he actually operated out of a real office with a real secretary just like a real PI.

Laramie's adventures are generally told in a low-key manner. The pacing is deliberately slow, country-style, and here those adventures take the erstwhile PI from rodeo stalls and cowboys being thrown to strip clubs and crooked figures from his past.… (altro)

In the fifth Drifter Detective novella, the story is even tighter and more thoroughly crafted than the earlier ones. To put it more bluntly, this book is damn good. Pretend you are back in the pulpy fifties. Stick a detective in the wild lands of Texas with no permanent abode. Just a De Soto and a trailer. Fill the book with deadpan humor and you have the makings of Garnett Elliott’s Drifter Detective series.
“Dinero Del Mar” finds Jack Laramie in a few new pickles. He finds himself involved in a Miss Texas Grapefruit beauty contest where he meets a gal, who he couldn’t say not to, if she asked him to swim the Rio Grande against a posse of water moccasins. Elliott captures the majesty and the sublime ridiculousness of the Texas beauty contest and how wrapped up the contestants and the sponsors were in winning the damn thing.

From there, Laramie finds himself, quite by accident, in the drunk tank, where he stumbles into his next client and finds himself on a Texas ranchette governed by a wacky matron who surrounds herself with hippies and beatniks of all stripes and sizes.

Of course, what mystery story would be complete without murder, mayhem, and other kinds of assorted misery.

There’s enough assaults, threats, swindlers, hustlers, drunks, and the like here to make your head spin, but the story is told in a gentle manner just as if you were back in Texas, passing time before that open fire.… (altro)

The eighth book of The Drifter Detective Series is split into two parts. As Two-Trick Pony by Garnett Elliot opens, it is 1948 in the Texas panhandle. Jack Laramie has to listen to nonsense from some trucker as the miles of Route 66 pass by. The Desoto broke down on his way to Amarillo so he was forced to hitchhike and that resulted in his riding with the trucker who sees Commies everywhere. Jack Laramie saw far worse than Commies when he served during WWII and is well aware this guy is an idiot. Using the gun he has with him that was once carried by his legendary grandfather would be a bad idea and not just because to do so would disrespect the weapon.

Newly minted private detective Jack Laramie is on the way to Amarillo on behalf of his boss, Hobart Jones, an insurance investigator down in Dallas. All he knows is he is supposed to see a Mr. Adair about a horse. It isn’t a case Laramie is going to want either after he hears the man out, but he has been paid and the job has to be done.

Part Two picks up 11 years later in Dallas where Jack Laramie has given up the lure of the open road for a shabby office in the Wilson Building near Commerce Street. Despite what had happened with members of the local mob three years earlier, Laramie had come back and opened his office. At least the Montmartre Club is within walking distance.

He has become a regular. One of the entertainer’s tonight is new in town. She is also a woman he knew in another time and in another place. She was trouble then over in Longview. No doubt she is trouble now. He has unfinished business with her. He isn’t the only one.

The grandson of legendary US Marshal Cash Laramie first appeared in The Drifter Detective. He continues on here in Two-Trick Pony. Every installment gives readers a strong taste of noir style crime fiction and this two-part read is no exception. Drive by nightmares from his past, Jack Laramie is a loner looking for peace in a bottle and justice at the end of a gun. Whether he finally found it is open to interpretation. This reader hopes the search is not over.

Two-Trick Pony: The Drifter Detective Series No. 8
Garnett Elliott
Beat To A Pulp
http://www.beattoapulp.com
October 2016
ASIN: B01M8I5H4J
eBook (also available in paperback)
99 Pages
$1.99

According to Amazon, I purchased this back last December. While it does not say how I made the purchase, I took advantage of a free read promotion or I used funds in my Amazon Associate account.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2017… (altro)