The Bad Samaritan: (8 Brock Callahan Mysteries)

Newly rich, married, and bored, Brock investigates an upper-class tragedy Private detective Brock Callahan, onetime star of the Los Angeles Rams, is racing toward a touchdown when the morgue's phone call wakes him up. His only rich relative, Uncle Homer, has just flown through the windshield of his midlife-crisis Ferrari, and Brock will never have to work again. The private detective hangs up his license, marries his longtime girlfriend, and decamps for the California hills--where he finds life among the nouveau riche to be duller than he ever imagined. However, there is one old lady--the quick-witted Maude Marner--who charms the old jock. But the day after she drops hints that she might have some work for him, she is found dead, having choked to death on her car's exhaust in a gruesome apparent suicide. As Brock digs into the dark corners of upper-crust suburbia, he finds that no matter how you dress it up, murder is always déclassé. The Bad Samaritan is the 8th book in the Brock Callahan Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

About the Author :
William Campbell Gault (1910 1995) was a critically acclaimed pulp novelist. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he took seven years to graduate from high school. Though he was part of a juvenile gang, he wrote poetry in his spare time, signing it with a girl s name lest one of his friends find it. He sold his first story in 1936, and built a great career writing for pulps like Paris Nights, Scarlet Adventures, and the infamous Black Mask. In 1939, Gault quit his job and started writing fulltime.When the success of his pulps began to fade in the 1950s, Gault turned to longer fiction, winning an Edgar Award for his first mystery, Don t Cry for Me (1952), which he wrote in twenty-eight days. He created private detectives Brock Callahan and Joe Puma, and also wrote juvenile sports books like Cut-Rate Quarterback (1977) and Wild Willie, Wide Receiver (1974). His final novel was Dead Pigeon (1992), a Brock Callahan mystery. "

Review :
"[Gault] writes with passion, beauty, and with an ineffable sadness which has previously been found only in Raymond Chandler." --Dorothy B. Hughes, author of In a Lonely Place "A legend in his own time." --Bill Pronzini, creator of the Nameless Detective series "[Gault] knows that writing well is the best revenge." --Ross MacDonald "Keen observation, coherent plotting and fresh, direct writing." --Bill M. Reilly, editor of Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers "[Gault] can write, never badly and sometimes like an angel." --Fredric Brown, author of The Fabulous Clipjoint "One of the most rounded and credible creations in the private detective business." --The New York Times "Brock Callahan is surely one of the major private detectives created in American fiction since Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe." --The New York Times