Killers Are My Meat

A drive-by killing puts Drum on the scent of a Washington sex scandal.When Chester Drum first took a crack at detective work, PI Gil Sprayregan offered to split a case with him, giving the rookie half the fee and more credit than he deserved. Years later, Drum is established and Gil is at the tail end of a long, slow fall,drinking heavily and considering blackmail to make ends meet. When he gets in over his head, Sprayregan's wife begs Drum to help. But her husband has already taken the first step on the road to oblivion.Drum takes a dinghy out to Sprayregan's Chesapeake hideout. When they return, a car full of gangsters kills Sprayregan and puts Drum in the hospital. Drum doesn't mourn the man who gave him his first break, but to the new widow, he owes a debt. No matter how well connected they are, he will break the men who gunned down Gil Sprayregan.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 ReviewA cult author for lovers of noir fiction. - Mónica Calvo-Pascual, author of Chaos and MadnessA great pulpster ... always one of my favorites. - Ed Gorman, author of The Poker ClubBiographical 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 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.