Customer Reviews

The Big Switch: A Brian Kane Mystery (Brian Kane Mysteries)

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Jack Bludis gives us a fast-paced, down and dirty ride through the mud puddles of post-war, pre-McCarthy Hollywood sleaze. The casting couch is all full up. Starlets are drugged and set up in smut shoots. Everybody's partying, boozing, and smoking, making movies, making money, and making each other. The studio morals clause is hanging over stellar heads and blackmail is the big easy.

There's a switch inside every switch in this book until you hit the big one Bludis has set in a powerhouse of a denouement.

The Big Switch is a traditional mystery -- there's a murder, a somewhat hard-boiled private eye (Brian Kane) who sets out to solve it, and a number of suspects and theories he has to consider. When the killer tries to scare Kane off, he just digs in deeper. But there are two things that set this book apart from the crowd: the setting, 1950's Hollywood, which you can see and hear and feel as you read; and the role of sex, to which Kane is addicted. That he cares deeply about a call girl named Kitty -- who loves him, too, in her own way -- is fitting and often touching. But Kane and Kitty are not the only ones with an itch. The stars and starlets of Movieland are nothing if not prurient in their tastes, and a quality that could conceivably undo Kane in a different setting actually becomes an investigative asset here. In short, The Big Switch is a fun diversion into a setting which -- despite its rather loose social mores and the crimes that make this book a murder mystery -- seems a lot more innocent than our world today.

It seems lately that too many mystery writers are asking me to like characters who are stuck on themselves and their own wealth, totally obnoxious and ugly to even their friends-- or both! Not so with four terrific mysteries I've read in the last month: "The Big Switch" by Jack Bludis; "All White Girls" by Michael Bracken; "Voodoo That You Do" by Richard Helms; and "Pilikia is my Business" by Mark Troy.

"The Big Switch" brings noir back in style with Brian Kane, Camel-smoking PI who's been hired to take photographs of Lester Randolph participating in one of his many extra-marital affairs. By page 25, Kane's discovered that his client is an imposter, the gun he took away from her had probably been used in a murder (but it doesn't matter, because someone's already stolen it from him!), and besides a cheating husband, he has to find a killer, because one-by-one, the young women linked to Randolph are winding up dead. A hard-boiled detective with a soft spot for young starlets? That's Kane, on the job until all the questions are answered.

The setting is Hollywood, the year 1951. Camel smoking, scotch drinking, skirt chasing, PI Brian Kane, is hot on the trail of a cheating Hollywood bigshot.

Things get messy when the trail becomes cluttered with dead starlets. Things get personal when Kane's sexy, sassy girlfriend, Kitty, is threatened by the killer. Things get dicy when the murders lead to him.

Kane finds himself in a race against time. He has to corner the killer before Kitty becomes the next victum, and he takes the fall.

(...) “The Big Switch” is set in 1951 and brings the reader into the era. Bludis finally reveals why Phillip Marlowe didn’t take divorce work. It can be murder. If you like period pieces and hardboiled mystery fiction with a punch, you’ll enjoy Jack Bludis’s “The Big Switch” and like me will be looking forward to his next tale of the tarnish hidden beneath all of the glamour and glitz. (...) I have one wish in regards to “The Big Switch” . . . let’s have one with Kansas Michaels front lining the story. Maybe Kane can take a holiday with his main squeeze Kitty, leaving LA to his police detective sergeant buddy.

This novel takes place post WWII in Hollywood. Movies are rolling off the line as fast as they can be produced. Rivers of money and glamour flow. Everyone wants a piece of the action. Beautiful women are plenteous, waiting to be discovered like Lana Turner in the soda fountain. These women are giving everything they have in the hopes of becoming a star, their talent, their beauty, their bodies and for some, their very lives.

Brian Kane, PI, is drawn into the mystery when hired for a simple and common task in this period of time, to gather evidence on a cheating husband. Very shortly into the job, Kane is faced with lies, murder, and the uncertainty of who it was that hired him. While in the midst of dealing with the perplexities of the job, Kane is personally drawn into the murders when someone involves Kitty Chaney, the love of Kane's life, though neither he nor Kitty will speak of it aloud.

The author does an excellent job keeping up the action and providing the clues. The details are descriptive and concise, allowing the reader to experience the atmosphere that surely permeated this era of Hollywood. The sex scenes are detailed in such a way that the intensity is enough to curl your toes, and yet without intruding on the story line. It was difficult to put the book down, until both Kane and I had some answers.

Jack Bludis' The Big Switch is a new, dark, and riveting mystery set in early 1950s, era of the Hollywood B-grade movies. Brian Kane is a hard-boiled private eye who must unravel the scheme behind the deaths of starlets, while toughing it out among the seamy underside of show business and the wrong side of the law. The Big Switch a dizzyingly fast-paced read, filled with action and surprises.

In 1951 Los Angeles, Charlotte Randolph hires private investigator Brian Kane to tail her movie star spouse Lester so she can learn the names of the wannabes he sleeps with. Brian discovers that Lester uses Noni Light, Lydia Lane, and Gloria Hastings to fill his evenings. The sleuth goes to his client's Beverly Hills' home to present his findings, but Charlotte denies hiring him. On closer inspection he realizes that someone similar looking used her identity to hire him two weeks ago.

Not long afterward the "not" Charlotte visits Brian's apartment. She demands the report pulling a gun on the sleuth. Brian easily disarms his client before giving her the report, but keeps the gun. The next day LAPD Detective Kansas Michaels informs him that someone shot and killed Noni and he is a suspect because everyone knows he followed her. Brian says nothing. Afterward he looks for the gun, but it is gone. Thinking back to yesterday, he realizes his client wore gloves while his fingerprints are on the weapon.

The first Kane Hollywood noir is an exciting tale that fans of 1950 hard-boiled mysteries will appreciate. Brian is a fabulous throwback to tales like The Big Sleep and his relationship with appointment queen Kitty Chaney is unique and fascinating. The clever twist that propels Brian to make inquiries before Kansas locks him up is the first gamut in a strong who-done-it. Strongly recommend this novel and the sequel THE DEAL KILLER that was so much fun it actually led this reviewer to this book.

Harriet Klausner

Fun, sexy mystery set in the Hollywood noir of 1951. Private Investigator Brian Kane is hired by a star's wife to follow her husband and see if he's cheating, but someone else wants the incriminating pictures and has the gun to prove it. A starlet is murdered, then another, and the bodies start piling up. Everyone has a secret, and after Kane's call-girl-girl-friend gets involved, he takes it very personally. To make things even more interesting, the women find Kane irresistible, and so is this book. It was fun going back to the time before cell phones and all the high tech gizmos of today's PI's. The writing was clean and crisp and well suited to the time frame and story. This is good hard boiled crime fiction. And check out the sequel, The Deal Killer.

Writing with a deceptively simple--almost conversational--style, Jack Bludis weaves a tale of treachery and deception in 1950s Hollywood. Clues are hidden in plain sight and the protagonist--Brian Kane--is the thoroughly likeable Private Eye who ultimately cracks the case.

I look forward to future Brian Kane stories from Jack Bludis.