Customer Reviews

Gremlin's Grampa

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Robert L. Pike hasn't written many new books lately, has he? he must be long gone, a shame, for in his day he was one of the number one crime writers, and we in San Francisco owe him a debt of gratitude. He made our city seem colorful with his intricate novels of police procedural crime, often featuring the short-tempered but loveable Lieutenant Jim Reardon, who here faces the biggest challenge of his career.

On a single night, at widely dispersed locations in San Francisco, from a rundown sailor's shack by Third Street, to the railings of the Golden Gate Bridge, to one of the city's fanciest penthouse hotels, three of the City's most notorious mobsters is murdered in a strange way. In at least two cases the prime suspect is a beautiful, seductive woman; however the woman in question is different in each case!

The suspects are many, for who wouldn't have wanted to see the gangsters go? In fact the three victims were all on the Captain's list of targets to eliminate, so Jim can't eliminate the suspicion that maybe one of their own killed Jerry Capp, Porfirio Falcone, or Ray Martin, one of their own on a personal mission of vendetta against the Mob. Could happen!

Eeardon's own personal life is sketched in neatly, and we begin to understand why his long time "fiancee" doesn't really want to marry him very desperately. The truth is, he's a man married to his job aslready. And also, late in the book, he begins to suspect that "that was no woman, that was a female impersonator." Working one of North Beach's bohemian bars is a stripper whose secret, when "she" takes it all off, is that she's really a man, a deadly, cold hearted man who is definitely not gay, but intirgued Reardon more and more. I was beginning to think Reardon had met his match, but instead the story takes off in a different direction altogether.

The violence is non stop, and the pressures of police work niceely outlined. The language is a little mild for cops, killers, mobsters and the average San Francisco working man. "Gremlins, my ass!" is about as ripe as Pike dares to get. I wonder why, must have been the times.

The "Gremlin's Grampa" turns out to be a cocktail ordered by the femme fatale every time she enters a bar. It is an "all blonde" drink composed of gin, vodka, vermouth, brandy, and, oh yes, here's the capper, cointreau. Even if she wasn't infernally statuesque, the girl in question would long be remembered for ordering a drink with those ingredients! A top notch thriller, but dated dreadfully.