Customer Reviews

A Long Time Dead (Thorndike Large Print Popular Series)

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I've come across a few of these Mark Preston PI novels, written under the Peter Chambers pen name and must admit some are pretty average. This one is pretty good though, simply because of all the twists where the main character, a private investigator expects someone's talking about one thing and it turning out to be another. This adds a slight level of humour to this episode in this hard boiled crime series.

Preston is hired to discuss a confidential project at Isobel Towers. There the confusion begins when he insults the snobby host by referring to her sister as the maid, and wrongly assuming the name Bill Drummond belongs to a man. However it is when Angela Drummond tells him she doesn't want the police involved dragging their family name through the mud and wants him to solve the murder of Napoleon Scotsman the Fourth who took a bullet to the head in the mansion the night before, and Preston outlines he is not risking his profession and jail time but show him the corpse so he can explain it all to the police that he realises he can take nothing at word value from these wannabe snobs but living a life close to poverty people. So Preston's on the case but it's not long before one of his suspects goes missing and a thug appears in his office wanting large wads of cash for his safe return.

Although the Mark Preston character novels do vary substantially in quality this isn't a bad read. Also check out the novels under the Phillip Daniels pen name by the same author (Dennis Philips), they are much more consistent in maintaining an average high quality than the ones under the Peter Chambers name.