Jeopardy Is My Job

Drum looks for a missing American in a sea of degenerate expats.An American has vanished in Spain, and it's his father, not his wife, who wants him found. When Chester Drum arrives in Iberia, legs aching from the three-thousand-mile flight, he finds Andrea Hartshorn not panicked, not mourning, but hosting the party of the year. World-weary expatriates mill about the villa, guzzling her liquor and dancing, without a thought for their missing countryman. Andrea is far from sober, but finally Drum gets her to open up. Of course she wants her husband back. But more than that, she wants her daughter.Robbie was last seen going south to Fuengirola, to confront a crippled bullfighter named Ruy Fuentes, who had been courting the Hartshorns' toreador-mad daughter. Drum sets out to find the missing Hartshorns, and learns that in Spain, a bull's horn is not the only romantic way to die.Review Quote:Very few writers of the tough private-eye story can tell it more accurately than Mr. Marlowe, or with such taut understatement of violence and sex. - The New York Times Book ReviewOften brash and violent ... with an impish sense of humor. - The IndependentDrum sleuths to his own beat; he is a strong private investigator, who hooks the audience in each tale, short or long. - Harriet Klausner Book ReviewsLangton's sparkling prose and inimitable wit offer a delectable feast for the discriminating reader. - Publishers WeeklyLike Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, Langton is blessed with the comic Spirit - a rare gift of genius to be cherished. - St. Louis Post-DispatchBiographical note:Stephen Marlowe (1928-2008) was the author of more than fifty novels, including nearly two dozen featuring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum. Born Milton Lesser, Marlowe was raised in Brooklyn and attended the College of William and Mary. After several years writing science fiction under his given name, he legally adopted his pen name, and began focusing on Chester Drum, the Washington-based detective who first appeared in The Second Longest Night (1955).Although a private detective akin to Raymond Chandler's characters, Drum was distinguished by his jet-setting lifestyle, which carried him to various exotic locales from Mecca to South America. These espionage-tinged stories won Marlowe acclaim, and he produced more than one a year before ending the series in 1968. After spending the 1970s writing suspense novels like The Summit (1970) and The Cawthorn Journals (1975), Marlowe turned to scholarly historical fiction. He lived much of his life abroad, in Switzerland, Spain, and France, and died in Virginia in 2008.