False Pretenses [Mass Market Paperback]

Arthur Lyons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1995

Returning from a wild goose chase of an assignment only to find his client dead in his office, L.A. private eye Jacob Asch teams up with detective Leslie Boetticher, who is investigating two related murders. Reprint. PW.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After a month spent pursuing perplexed oldsters whose abler relatives hope to claim conservatorship of their assets, a change is as good as a rest for LA shamus Jacob Asch, seen before in Other People's Money et al. Although Asch has a classic hangdog charm, this particular case limps along unconvincingly and without much continuity. The man who hires Asch to follow his straying wife isn't who he says he is; the wife Asch tails is a prostitute hired for the job. When the man is killed in Asch's office, the PI is in position for the fall. While investigating what he was set up for, Asch gets involved with a long-legged, dark-haired beauty of a police officer who entertains him in lacy little nothings that don't go with her uniform. He doesn't exactly complain, even as he still serves as occasional sexual plaything for a lusty television anchorwoman. After more killings, the suggestion of cop corruption arises, leading to a conclusion that seems too neat, despite the threads, especially emotional ones, left hanging in the warm California air. Nevertheless, the shabby, solitary Asch, hunkered down in his own retro-California, inhabits a decidedly Chandler-esque time and place.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

After a five-year hiatus, Jacob Asch is back. The prototypical modern L.A. private eye, Asch is forced to supplement his income tracking down elderly wards of the state who have wandered off. Then he lands the job of tailing one Mark Jacobi's wife. After an uneventful day of tailing her, Asch returns to his office to find Mark Jacobi dead from a bullet in the brain. As the cops conduct their investigation, Asch finds out that Jacobi wasn't really Jacobi but a small-time hustler and snitch. As Asch says, echoing Sam Spade, when a guy gets killed in your office, it's bad for detectives everywhere, and he has to do something about it. Heading the official investigation is Lieutenant Leslie Boetticher, blond bombshell and hard-nosed cop. Asch falls for her--hard. When his investigation leads him to Leslie's partner, Asch is forced to make some difficult decisions. How much can he trust Leslie? A tough, clever mystery with more than a little debt to The Maltese Falcon; Asch is a worthy descendant of Mr. Spade. Wes Lukowsky --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (March 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446404225
• ISBN-13: 978-0446404228
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 3.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,375,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking for a modern-day Marlowe?, August 13, 2000

By 

D. Ross "http://directorblue.blogspot.com" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: False Pretenses (Mass Market Paperback)

Jacob Asch is about as close to Marlowe as it gets. When I read crime fiction (especially first-person stories about private investigators set in LA!), I'm continually making comparisons with Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. So far, I've found two worthy successors to Chandler: Crumley and Lyons.

Lyons' execution is nearly flawless. The story never sags, from its opening in which a new client is found dead in Asch's office. The pursuit of the truth about the client, his prostitute girlfriend and junkie crime-partner is wound into a tight, elegant ball of a plot, surrounded by a host of LA police detectives... some cooperative and some downright suspicious of Asch's motives.

I encountered and read this book by accident. I will hunt down the other Asch novels for the simple reason that this book is an entertaining, nearly flawless example of LA PI fiction.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hard-boiled winner, January 16, 1998

By 

P. Mann (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: False Pretenses (Mass Market Paperback)

Reporter turned private detective Jacob Asch agrees to meet a man on short notice--anything to take Asch from the ennui of tracking down elderly people for conservatorship actions. The man says he suspects his wife of being unfaithful, and Asch takes the case. After a fruitless day of following the woman, Asch returns to his office to find his client murdered. Asch is further confused when the man turns out not to be who he claimed to be. The police are not confused, though. Asch is promptly jailed.

When the police verify Asch's whereabouts during the day, they finally release Asch, who vows to solve the mystery of the murdered client. When each lead seems to leave to a corpse, Asch finds himself involved in an even larger mystery and a growing cast of suspects. He finds himself growing increasingly suspicious as he falls into the arms of a gorgeous blonde homicide detective. But can he trust her, her alcoholic partner, the self-centered reporter who did the story on police corruption, the widow of a slain cop, the mechanic who dabbles as a pimp, or any of the other people in the story?

"False Pretenses" is a hard-boiled detective story for the '90s, true to the genre's pioneers without being an anachronism. Jacob Asch may not be Sam Spade, but he is not too far removed. The result is a very enjoyable novel.