Review: Gumshoe - The Mortimer Angel Series by Rob Leininger

Move over Mike Hammer and Sam Spade - there's a new kid in town, and his name is Angel .... Mort Angel.



Gumshoe:

Missing for nine days: the mayor and district attorney of Reno, Nevada. Their vehicles were found parked side-by-side at Reno-Tahoe International airport. Did they fly somewhere together? They aren’t on any flight manifests. Did they take off with a big pile of the city’s money? If so, city accountants can’t find it. Were they murdered? There’s no sign of foul play. Their disappearances have finally made national news.

Enter Mort Angel, 41, Reno’s newest gumshoe, a private-eye-in-training at his nephew’s investigative firm. Just four hours into his new career, Mort finds the mayor---dead, and in the trunk of his ex-wife’s Mercedes. Did Mort kill the mayor? Did Mort’s ex? A news-hungry nation wants to know.

As events begin to spin out of control, Mort realizes things have been out of control since the night before he started his new career, the night he found the unknown naked blond in his bed . . .

Gumshoe For Two:

In the style of Dashiell Hammett , ex-IRS agent turned gumshoe-in-training, Mortimer Angel, is approached by a beautiful hooker, Holiday, in a casino bar in Reno. Mort first met Holiday two months ago, but now learns that she's not really a hooker. She's a college engineering student, searching for her younger sister, Allie, who disappeared three months ago. Having seen Mort in the news, Holiday knows he's a PI who finds missing persons. 

While in the bar with Mort, Holiday gets an unexpected phone call from Allie, who says she's in Gerlach, a small town in Nevada. The call is cut off. Holiday hires Mort on the spot, dragging him off to Gerlach. When Mort finds a connection between Allie and US Senator Harry "Liar" Reinhart, a presidential candidate who vanished without a trace three days ago, things quickly turn deadly ... very deadly.

Gumshoe On The Loose:

IRS agent-turned-PI Mortimer Angel is relaxing in a hole-in-the-wall bar in a Reno casino when an attractive young girl hires him to find out who left her a cryptic message demanding a million dollars. At the girl’s house, Mort finds the body of missing rapper Jonnie Xenon―Jo-X to his legions of fans―hanging from the rafters with two bullet holes in him. Mort is shocked when he learns the identity of the girl’s father―and even more shocked when the father hires him to investigate the murder.

Mort, being Mort, accumulates a few felonies as he follows the clues to Las Vegas. And along the way, he picks up an alluring young assistant who changes his life―in every conceivable way.

Gumshoe Rock:

Early in July, northern Nevada’s senior Internal Revenue Service agent, Ronald Soranden—disliked by every agent in the Reno IRS office—vanished without a trace. In September, he makes a dramatic reappearance, of sorts. His skull—stripped clean and white—is dropped through the slashed top of a Mustang convertible. The vehicle belongs to Lucy Landry, PI Mortimer Angel’s gorgeous young assistant now working with him on a seemingly unrelated embezzlement case.

But Mort is a former IRS field agent in Reno. He’d done his time during the tyrannical reign of Soranden, quitting, he says, “when I discovered I have a soul.” Now that his former boss’s head has appeared, he and Lucy find them themselves under the annoying surveillance of a pair of IRS enforcement agents.

When the FBI are brought in to investigate the murder, Mort and Lucy realize shocking details about their own case—primarily Soranden’s involvement. It becomes evident that events and suspects of the embezzlement case and Soranden’s murder are heavily entangled with those enmeshed in an ugly case of blackmail. Mort and Lucy are roped tighter and tighter into the Soranden investigation while they grapple with the deadliest situation of their PI careers. Mortimer Angel has been in harrowing, lethal situations before and has suffered incalculable losses, but none more horrifying than the trap embedded in Gumshoe Rock.

Gumshoe In The Dark:

Blackmail, murder, and a pretty girl on the run Nevada's attorney general is missing. At dusk on a deserted Nevada highway in a thunderstorm, ex-IRS agent and PI-in-training Mortimer Angel comes across a pretty, scantily-clad girl—Harper Leland. She's cold and alone, thirty miles from the nearest town. When Mort offers her a ride, she orders him out of his truck at gunpoint. She tries to take off, but he cuts the valve stem on the rear tire. Realizing she's in trouble, he wants to help—but with no spare tire, he devises a creative way to get them out of the hills—slowly, precariously balanced on three tires. 

On their way down, a rough-looking man stops and asks Mort if he has "seen anyone up in the hills." Mort realizes the guy is after Harper, who is hiding in the truck. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse chase in northeast Nevada that continues even after Mort finds the attorney general—Harper's mother—dead in the trunk of a car. In time, Mort's wife, Lucy, is also pulled into the case, which becomes the deadliest of Mort's career.

~ ~ ~

Mortimer (Mort) Angel is a 40-something, newly minted and rather green private detective who was an IRS (internal revenue service) employee in a previous lifetime. Mort is taken on by one Ma (aka Maude Cleary) the best PI in Neveda, though both he and she soon wonder what he has gotten himself into.

Mort - our narrator - is a magnet for trouble (and chicks, always scantily clad) - which amounts to the same thing in Mort's world, which transcends the underbelly of Reno, Nevada. Mort has a knack for finding people .... well, their body parts actually, which seem to land right in his lap, much to the chagrin of local law enforcement, who have Mort firmly in their sights.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get a hold of the first in the series, but the books following provided enough references that I had no trouble picking up at book two.

Leininger's nuanced narrative is raw and punchy, paced well as the action slowly gathers speed to its inevitable conclusion. Mort is provided with some gritty and yet humorous dialogue- such as:

" ... a hooker walks into a bar .... " (literally)

" ... this investigation had become a hydra, with tentacles all over the place ..."

" ... evil was tracking me down like a yeti hunting meat ... "

" ... Internal Revenue was a "service" like Schwarzenegger was a terminator, so ... maybe not ... "

Each book has a well woven story, littered with noirish references, a little tax talk, and where everything borders on the illegal.  There are plenty of hair-raising escapes for the resourceful Mort, who at times seems to be channeling his inner MacGyver. It is usually in the last 100 pages that things really pick up, and both the narrative and events are quite deftly turned on their ear before - like a boulder rolling down a hill - the damage (and body count) is revealed. 

This is a great series, well worth investing in and a must read for lovers of noir detective fiction!