The Big Fix (A Moses Wine Mystery) [Paperback]

Roger L. Simon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2000

Introduction by Academy Award winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, who portrayed Moses Wine in the acclaimed screen adaptation of 'The Big Fix.' With a new afterword by Roger L. Simon.

Who Killed the Sixties-Or Was it a Suicide?

Moses Wine thought he had put his interest in politics far behind him when he became a Los Angeles-based private detective. Sure, he'd once been an activist, but that had been during the Sixties. A lifetime ago?or so it seemed, before Lila Shea showed up on his doorstep. Lila was a woman who could have been the love of his life?had they remained together after their last night of passion in 1967. Nevertheless, she's back, and her political views are as strong as they were when Moses last saw her.

Before he knows it, Moses finds himself at the campaign headquarters of Senator Miles Hawthorne. .

The job Hawthorne offers seems simple: Locate Howard Eppis, chairman of the Free Amerika Party, and convince him to end the smear campaign he's been waging against the senator during his bid for presidency.

But then Lila turns up dead, and suddenly politics are the last thing on Moses' mind?...

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"COMPELLING...HARD-BOILED... the style is out of Dashiell Hammett by Rolling Stone...with dialogue as realistic as any heard on a bugged telephone".

LosAngeles Times

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: I Books (March 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671039067
• ISBN-13: 978-0671039066
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,042,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A bizarre cultural artifact, June 3, 2001

By 

Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big Fix (A Moses Wine Mystery) (Paperback)

I should start by saying that am a huge fan of Private Investigator fiction and that this was my first Moses Wine novel. Apparently, author Roger L. Simon was trying to update the classic Phillp Marlowe type P.I. story to the hip and strange place that Southern California (especially the criminal underworld) had become by the early 1970s. "The Big Fix" has a very strong sense of place and time, and today reads like a snapshot of that very confused era. However, as a mystery, the plot is fairly pedestrian. Set on the backdrop of a political campaign (though we never meet the candidate himself), one of Wine's ex-girlfriends is murdered shortly after bringing him a case. However, Wine doesn't seem particularly outraged and pursues the case with a curious detachment. Along the way he encounters a cornucopia of early 70s revolutionaries and hippies. Ultimately though, the climax is a disappointment not worthy of the story's buildup.

Simon has all the moves of a classic P.I. writer. Wine is appropriately cynical, hardedged and wise-cracking. What he needs is a truly Marlowe-esque plot to sink his teeth into.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real redeemer, February 21, 2005

By 

John Gay "still wandering" (Vancouver, London(derry), Beijing & Jerusalem) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big Fix (A Moses Wine Mystery) (Paperback)

Roger Simon has a terrific sense of how our political identities are rooted in so much more (or less) than the depth or purity of our ideas. We identify with those who are the models for the kind of person we think we are, or the group to which we want to belong, and in the process we lose sight of our real political objectives, if we ever knew what they were in the first place. This book explores this dilemma for Moses Wine as he grapples with his own personal history of the sixties in investigating the murder of the woman who symbolizes both his love and politics at that time. Now he must ask again, what really motivates our search for truth? I won't impose my solution to this fascinating mystery.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eminently readable, unique detective story, February 8, 2011

By 

James Tetreault (North Grafton, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Big Fix (Paperback)

I bought this book because I saw it among a list of the 100 best detective stories. I knew nothing about the author or the subject. I read this book straight through in just a few hours. The writing flows very easily. His casually tossed off descriptions of place and setting are terrific. I'm not entirely in the camp of the perspective of the main character, he's a liberal while I'm a libertarian but there's a lot of overlap. The story could be enjoyed by anyone other than a diehard opposite of Moses Wine, though, because the perspective isn't put across obnoxiously. I'd really like to have given this book four and a half stars. My only reservation was that some aspects of the plot didn't quite work for me. It was still a very entertaining read and one I'd recommend to anyone.