You Bet Your Life

Rating:
Summary: Not a good gamble this time around.
Review: The best of these Toby Peters mysteries (such as Never Cross a Vampire and to a lesser extent Murder on the Yellow Brick Road) are the ones where the celebrity clients have something to do, or where the proceedings at least parallel some aspect of their lives. This is not one of those, joining The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance as a novel where the supposed star, this time the Marx Brothers, are only the deus ex machina.

There are other ways this novel is a departure for the series, and in every way it deviates from the norm is a way in which it fails. Perhaps that is merely happenstance, but I think the changes themselves are to blame, as opposed to any faulty ideas or execution.

This novel is set in Chicago, allowing interaction with Mayor Daley and mobsters such as Frank Nitti. The plot involves Toby trying to get Chico Marx out of a situation arisen from gambling debts, which he says are not his.

There is notably less humor in this book than in previous adventures. It is freezing cold, Toby is perpetually ill and in pain, and meets a succession of characters that are sad or pitiful without ever achieving much poignancy. And as for Toby himself, his pathetic lifestyle is palatable when the comedic nature of it is trumped up; here it is more serious, almost maudlin at times. In addition, though these books are modeled after Chandler, they've never really managed the cynical wit or wry dialogue; so the humor is missed even more sorely here.

My overriding complaint with this book is this: Why have the Marx Brothers in your story if they're not going to act like the Marx Brothers? I understand that they were not the same men as their stage-and-screen personas, and were even a little frustrated by inability to transcend them. But I maintain that the injection of a little of their subversive craziness into a project which bears their image is only right, and would have improved this book immensely. It goes back to the first paragraph of this review: give the Hollywood stars something to do, or at least comment on their life and livelihood through the action. (I would have loved to read Groucho flustering a room full of corrupt cops with trademark one-liners and non-sequitirs. And I am likewise intrigued by a mental picture of Harpo using his giant Duck Soup scissors to cut a bunch of mobsters' ties, then soaking his feet in a vat of their beer.)

Only at the end, after the wrap-up, does Toby check in with any members of the usual supporting cast, and then only by phone. Too bad; it sounds like some interesting events had been happening to them back in LA.

There are nice things about the book, too, though comparatively few: Ian Fleming makes a welcome cameo, rescuing Toby in a manner not unlike his fictional creation might have, and we also meet a diseased, demented Al Capone early in the story. The "love interest" (I hate that term, because they're seldom more than warm bodies) could have been an interesting character, but she is little more in these pages than the standard harlot with a heart of semi-gold.

The book is unfortunately not enough redeemed by a thoughtful solution. Chicago in this period of history was a unique place, but I still think the mystery could have played out the same almost anywhere. Kaminsky likely had a mob story in him and had no way better to use it.

Deal yourself out of this hand, at least until you've read some of the others in the Toby Peters series.