Some Die Hard is a hardboiled locked-room murder mystery—those impossible
crimes where the whodunit is less important than the howdunit
(and I’m not even going to tell you who the victim
is). Its prose is smooth, although not as crystal as Stephen Mertz’s latest
work, and the story is enjoyable and easy. Easy to read, rather than easy to
guess. Dugan is likable and hardboiled. He is big-fisted, clever and carries
that sacred Private Eye code. A knight-errand more concerned with justice than
law.
STAND ALONE PAGES
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Friday, October 18, 2019
SOME DIE HARD by Stephen Mertz
Some Die Hard is Stephen Mertz’s first published novel. It
appeared as a paperback original in 1979 from the low-rent New York publisher
Manor Books, as by Stephen Brett. A pseudonym, at least the surname—according
to an informative and interesting Afterword in the recent Rough Edges Press edition—that
was a hat-tip to Brett Halliday. The same Brett Halliday behind the fictional
private eye Michael Shayne.
Rock Dugan, a former stuntman who gave up Hollywood for private
detective work and Denver, is returning home—after tying up an employee theft
investigation—from the fictional Langdon Springs, Colorado. Sitting next to
Dugan on the bus ride home is a nervous man who, once they arrive at the depot,
panics and bolts, stumbling into Dugan before dashing into traffic where he’s
hit and killed by a taxi. The police think the man’s death is an accident, an
opinion Dugan doesn’t share because the man expertly passed an envelope to him
in the confusion. The envelope’s contents are for Susan Court who, with a dying
millionaire father changing his will at the last minute and a no-good brother,
hired the nervous man, also a P.I., to uncover a few secrets.
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