Cleve F. Adams’ The Private Eye was originally published in 1942 with this Signet edition fronted by a Lu Kimmel action scene appearing in 1951. Adams sets a story in fictional Las Cruces, Arizona featuring two rival mining concerns, a current mayor and a former, a sheriff and a former, a femme fatale who the hero desires but whose husband’s suicide he’s investigating as a possible murder, which he does by first inventing a fake investigation as cover, but is sought for hire by three rival parties, accepts an offer, but with the understanding he’ll pretend to be working for his employer’s enemy, and somehow does all this while supervising a less than brilliant partner, and navigating the surprise appearance in town of his longtime flirtation who uses his cases as inspiration for her popular crime novels.
That’s just a mini summary. There’s plenty more we could add to that run-on sentence. Excellent writing is useful in helping readers keep complex mystery novels straight. Read this passage where the main character John Shannon muses on his next move and see if you think it’s excellent: Also there was the matter of a certain hunk of dynamite thrown at a man named John J. Shannon. He decided that whatever Giles MacLeish chose to tell him, and regardless of the motivation behind the telling, he, Shannon, could not lose by listening.
That’s tortured. It’s almost as if Adams had trouble keeping things straight himself. We can envision his agent and Signet editors suggesting that his plot would lose many readers, and we can imagine him assuring them that people would follow it fine. He’d have been correct if he’d been better at his job, but his style and approach aren’t what you’d call riveting, so the complexity of the story will be a problem for some. Still, we can’t knock him for treating his readers like attentive adults. We can knock him for straining credulity in numerous instances. Can someone really snap-draw a pistol and shoot someone else’s gun out of their hand? We seriously doubt it, but maybe Adams figured if it’s a good enough gimmick for Old West gunslingers it’s good enough for modern detectives. Despite its problems, though, The Private Eye is probably worth a try for hardcore vintage mystery fans.
