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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best from this publishing house, January 28, 2008
This review is from: Kill Now, Pay Later (Mass Market Paperback)
This is the first Robert Terrall novel I've read. Assuming Hard Case reprises his other titles, it certainly won't be the last. I really liked this book.
What's to like? First, some very sharp turns of phrase. There must be at least a couple dozen in the book you just want to read to whomever is within listening distance. Sardonic for sure, but Terrall has a great ear for incisive social observation in a few sentences.
Two, a well thought out plot that twists throughout the book, in not implausible but unexpected ways. A book in which all the clues are dangled and still surprises is rare. Kill Now is such a book.
Finally, the protagonist seems like a real character. He makes mistakes, gets sucked into things which not are as they seem, but comes out ahead in the end. He is a flesh and blood character who earns the readers respect, even though in his introduction, he thoroughly blows his assignment.
Highly recommended!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A change of pace for Crime, Hard Case, January 26, 2008
This review is from: Kill Now, Pay Later (Mass Market Paperback)
The name Robert Terrall may not mean much to you. But how about Robert Kyle (the name under which Kill Now, Pay Later was originally published)? Or Jose Gonzalez? If those names don't ring a bell, another one might. Terrall was also one of two men who wrote Mike Shayne novels under the pseudonym Brett Halliday (the other was Davis Dresser, Shayne's creator).
Shayne's name will undoubtedly be familiar to most crime fans, being a character who was not only featured in those novels and a popular radio series (later TV), but who also loaned his name to a magazine (Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine) that published stories by many of crime fiction's biggest names. "Halliday" (presumably Dresser) was also the host (after John Dickson Carr) of Murder by Experts, one of the best crime anthology radio shows of its day.
As Kyle, this prolific writer's claim to fame was a series of novels featuring P.I. Ben Gates. Kill Now, Pay Later is the third in that series of five, and Hard Case Crime has released it under Terrall's own name for the first time.
Hired by an insurance company to guard wedding presents, Gates is subsequently drugged and wakes up to a missing diamond bracelet and two dead bodies. Passing out on the job is not likely to bring new referrals, so Gates takes it upon himself to solve the mystery (against the wishes of Lieutenant Minturn of the state police, who is pretty much satisfied that Gates had something to do with the crime) before he becomes corpse number three.
Unlike most of the other books put out by Hard Case Crime, this one is a pretty straightforward private eye tale. Gates has an eye for the ladies (and, more importantly, they for him), which makes question and answer sessions interesting, but the actual solution -- thought it takes place in the midst of a conflagration -- is rather anticlimactic. And the tidy, tie-up-all-the-loose-ends conclusion, while satisfying in its own way, is certainly not what Hard Case Crime readers will be expecting.
Still, Ben Gates and his friend/colleague are charming characters I would follow to another book, and Terrall's style is smooth enough to make Kill Now, Pay Later a light, easygoing read that would probably appeal to fans of Erle Stanley Gardner's novels under the name A.A. Fair (Top of the Heap, for example).
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Clamors for the reader's attention from first page to last, November 29, 2007
This review is from: Kill Now, Pay Later (Mass Market Paperback)
It seems like yesterday that Mike Shayne, a private investigator in the Mike Hammer mold, was all over the place. Created by Brett Halliday, he was in a series of paperbacks, appeared on a television show and even had a mystery magazine. Halliday, however, was a pseudonym for Robert Terrall, who wrote under a number of different names. One of his better-known series, written as "Robert Kyle," featured a PI named Ben Gates, a softer-boiled version of Shayne. Gates did insurance and guard work, occasionally got in trouble and always wound up with a lady or two. And the stories? Well, they were excellent.
Now, Hard Case Crime blesses readers with KILL NOW, PAY LATER, a Ben Gates mystery that has been out of print for well over 40 years but stands up amazingly well in spite of --- or maybe because of --- the passage of time. The novel begins with Gates on an insurance company job with what is supposed to be a very easy assignment: guarding the presents at a very high-class wedding. It's one of those tasks where no one really expects any trouble, and all Gates has to do is maintain a presence, if you will, to discourage anyone whose thoughts stray toward walking off with something.
Problems begin, however, when someone slips sleeping pills into Gates's coffee. When he comes to the office the next morning, Gates is in huge trouble. Money is missing, two people are dead and Gates is being solemnly assured that he will never get insurance company work again. Suspects abound --- all are female, beautiful and uncontrollably attracted to him. Before he is through, Gates is involved in a caper involving pornography, blackmail and murder. While all the trademarks of the genre are here --- fisticuffs, double-crosses and a good deal of tawdry temptation --- there is also a first-rate, tantalizing mystery in KILL NOW, PAY LATER that clamors for the reader's attention from first page to last.
Terrall is still with us, a solid 93 and counting. It is fitting that in his salad years a new generation of readers should become acquainted with him, while several older generations should re-familiarize themselves with him.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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