Customer Reviews

Lucky Dog and Other Tales of Murder (Five Star Mystery Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anyone wondering what happened to Lochte's great detective duo, Leo Bloodworth and Serendipity Dahlquist, can catch up on several of their newer adventures in this terrific collection of novellas. His other wonderful, dimensional characters are here, too. New Orleans private eye Terry Manion and his mentor, J.J. Legendre. New full length novels about these unique heroes would be nice. But until then, these shorter stories will more than suffice.

Lucky Dog and Other Tales of Murder
Dick Lochte 2000

A few more crumbs in an all too sparse ouvre. 3*

I got to know Dick Lochte's work through his two novels (Sleeping Dog and Laughing Dog) "written by" the PI duo of Leo Bloodworth and precocious teen girl Serendipity Dahlquist. Unfortunately, only 3 of the 9 stories in this volume involve the pair": Lucky Dog and Rappin' Dog, narrated by Serendipitiy, and Mad Dog by Leo.

Lochte also wrote two books, Blue Bayou and The Neon Smile, featuring the New Orleans detective Terry Manion (and his mentor, J.J. Legendre), which I haven't yet read. They are represented here by the Terry Manion tale Get the Message, and two with Legendre in 1967, Murder at Mardi Gras and A Murder of Import.

A Tough Case to Figure brings the two series together: Bloodworth is called in by the Manion Detective Agency to investigate a case of extortion where Manion himself would be too well known. Unusually, the tale is told by one of the suspects.

Sad-Eyed Blonde was written for a book of Philip Marlowe pastiches and features a nameless hard boiled dick in 1940 Los Angeles. (The name had to be removed for contractual reasons.)

In Vampire Dreams, aging and long out of work actor Byron Ruthven, known for his vampires, is called back for one last role at the specific request of the author, Emma Lomax, who has envisioned a new, modern vampire (who could even be vegetarian!). Emma finds herself smitten with Byron, and delves into his past, including the infamous murder that led to his retirement.

In addition to the stories, there is an interesting introduction with a bit of background on Lochte himself (he worked his way through college working for a PI:-), and a few words about the individual stories.

I'd really rate this collection about 3.5*'s, and rounded down maybe because it's Tuesday or maybe to minorly counteract the one other, enthusiastic but vague, review's 5*'s. Maybe I'm just not into the short form of mystery fiction, but to me the stories seem clever but somehow lacking, without room for the character or color development that a full novel (or series) or a whole volume of stories about one character allows.