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The Case of the Hard-Boiled Dicks
Hard as a rock, tough as nails, dense as concrete, he's Mac Slade, Private Dick. This is a fun knock off of the hardboiled persuasion, and Mac Slade is a Hardboiled PI who is having a hard day. Great hardboiled parody, very hard to find.
Paperback
First published July 1, 1985
21 people want to read
About the author
John Blumenthal
13 books106 followersBack in the day, I was an editorial staffer at Esquire, and later an editor, writer and columnist at Playboy magazine. Then came four years of screenwriting (2 movies made: "Short Time"-- Fox and "Blue Streak"--Sony) ), followed by my present line of work--novelist. I have plied that trade for about 15 years.
My sixth novel, THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD (Regal House) was published in October 2019. (It recently won the 2019 Next Generation Book Award for Fiction.)
I have written eight other books for publishers such as St. Martin's Press, Simon & Schuster and Ballantine Books. These include the novels, "The Case of the Hardboiled Dicks," "The Tinseltown Murders," the award-winning "What’s Wrong with Dorfman?" and "Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour" as well as the recently-published "Three and a Half Virgins".
My articles have appeared in TV Guide, Punch, The National Lampoon, Los Angeles Times, Today's Health, Mens Life, American Woman, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chicago Sun Times, Oui, Salon.com, Huff Post, Publishers Weekly and numerous other publications.
I've also written for television and am the co-author of the movies "Blue Streak" (Sony Pictures) and "Short Time" (Fox).
I'm introverted and admittedly somewhat lazy by nature, so I decided to become an author at the age of 9 when I realized I could do it at home. An early influence was Mark Twain, who often wrote in bed in his pajamas,. Very civilized.
I was born in Middletown, NY, the son of a physician and a stay-at-home mom. I attended Tufts University where I majored in English, with a minor in Not-Being-Drafted-And-Sent-To-Vietnam.
My father was both a neurotic and a hypochondriac, which provided me with enough material for two novels. The mere concept of a hypochondriac physician is literary gold.
After college, I became a whale’s tooth polisher (true) for a scrimshaw carver on Nantucket Island. It was during this Melville-esque dental hygiene career that I wrote a humorous, self-deprecating letter to the editor of Esquire and was hired as a fact checker.
I live in Santa Monica, CA with my wife and an adorable but not very bright canine. I have two delightful adult daughters.
Why do I write? Partly because I have a compulsive need to express myself, partly because I don’t have to commute and partly because I’m not much good at anything else.
#TheStrangeCourtshipOfAbigailBird
FOLLOW ME ON GOODREADS
My sixth novel, THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD (Regal House) was published in October 2019. (It recently won the 2019 Next Generation Book Award for Fiction.)
I have written eight other books for publishers such as St. Martin's Press, Simon & Schuster and Ballantine Books. These include the novels, "The Case of the Hardboiled Dicks," "The Tinseltown Murders," the award-winning "What’s Wrong with Dorfman?" and "Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour" as well as the recently-published "Three and a Half Virgins".
My articles have appeared in TV Guide, Punch, The National Lampoon, Los Angeles Times, Today's Health, Mens Life, American Woman, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chicago Sun Times, Oui, Salon.com, Huff Post, Publishers Weekly and numerous other publications.
I've also written for television and am the co-author of the movies "Blue Streak" (Sony Pictures) and "Short Time" (Fox).
I'm introverted and admittedly somewhat lazy by nature, so I decided to become an author at the age of 9 when I realized I could do it at home. An early influence was Mark Twain, who often wrote in bed in his pajamas,. Very civilized.
I was born in Middletown, NY, the son of a physician and a stay-at-home mom. I attended Tufts University where I majored in English, with a minor in Not-Being-Drafted-And-Sent-To-Vietnam.
My father was both a neurotic and a hypochondriac, which provided me with enough material for two novels. The mere concept of a hypochondriac physician is literary gold.
After college, I became a whale’s tooth polisher (true) for a scrimshaw carver on Nantucket Island. It was during this Melville-esque dental hygiene career that I wrote a humorous, self-deprecating letter to the editor of Esquire and was hired as a fact checker.
I live in Santa Monica, CA with my wife and an adorable but not very bright canine. I have two delightful adult daughters.
Why do I write? Partly because I have a compulsive need to express myself, partly because I don’t have to commute and partly because I’m not much good at anything else.
#TheStrangeCourtshipOfAbigailBird
FOLLOW ME ON GOODREADS
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 14, 2019
This book is pretty good but I’m the author, ergo totally biased and therefore not to be trusted.
January 1, 2014
I should have realized it from the title, but it didn't take long for me to figure out this book wasn't meant to be taken seriously. It grabs every private eye cliche and wrings it for every thing it can get out of it. Mac Slade is our erstwhile hero and every woman wants him. He wants every woman. When he brushes a woman off several times, he literally gives her a brush(clothes, hair, lint).
The women are all beautiful and we get lines like "games from the hips all the way to the ground" and "a blouse so tight that if breasts could breathe, they would have to come up for air shortly." He has a gal Friday named Tuesday, he carries a gat, a heater, a roscoe.
He's not very bright and has been known, when following a car, to lose it and pick up the wrong one later. He once followed a car from New York to Arizona before realizing his mistake.
He's hired by a beautiful woman who calls herself Mary Smith to find her baby brother Link, in hiding from the mob for gambling debts. Slade quips "I specialize in finding missing links.
Bodies keep turning up with a bullet from Slade's gun in them, but they've been dead for hours, boiled alive in water. The first is identified as Mike Hammer, Jr., the second as Philip Marlowe, Jr., and the cops are looking for Sam Spade, Jr., one wanting to pin it all on Slade.
A shadowy figure known as the "Fat Man" seems to be behind it all and Slade runs into a mob boss looking for the brother named Don Corleone.
An amusing little book and it put me in mind of Get Smart for it's silliness. Don Adams would have been perfect in the role of Mac Slade.
The women are all beautiful and we get lines like "games from the hips all the way to the ground" and "a blouse so tight that if breasts could breathe, they would have to come up for air shortly." He has a gal Friday named Tuesday, he carries a gat, a heater, a roscoe.
He's not very bright and has been known, when following a car, to lose it and pick up the wrong one later. He once followed a car from New York to Arizona before realizing his mistake.
He's hired by a beautiful woman who calls herself Mary Smith to find her baby brother Link, in hiding from the mob for gambling debts. Slade quips "I specialize in finding missing links.
Bodies keep turning up with a bullet from Slade's gun in them, but they've been dead for hours, boiled alive in water. The first is identified as Mike Hammer, Jr., the second as Philip Marlowe, Jr., and the cops are looking for Sam Spade, Jr., one wanting to pin it all on Slade.
A shadowy figure known as the "Fat Man" seems to be behind it all and Slade runs into a mob boss looking for the brother named Don Corleone.
An amusing little book and it put me in mind of Get Smart for it's silliness. Don Adams would have been perfect in the role of Mac Slade.
February 19, 2013
I can't remember how many times I laughed out loud and at length while reading this book, sometimes at its genuine humor, sometimes at its absurdity, sometimes at the audacity of its ridiculousness. I can only imagine that John Blumenthal's tongue must have cramped from keeping it in his cheek so long. There's not one Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler/Mickey Spillane trope that doesn't get skewered in this quick read. Here's a sample from the first page, and it's not even the tip of the iceberg:
"'Hey, scum,' the lady copper said in a voice that sounded like she'd sprinkled gravel on her Raisin Bran that morning."
"'Hey, scum,' the lady copper said in a voice that sounded like she'd sprinkled gravel on her Raisin Bran that morning."
December 18, 2007
I think I read this book in 1985 or so. It's a send up of film noir, where the Dicks ar tough, the broads are leggy and the bad guys illiterate. Funny and predictable, it's good to kill a couple of hours with this or the companion Max Slade book, "The Tinseltown Murders."
November 7, 2015
I don't care what was said about this book, I found it enjoyable and hilarious. It's good to find a book that doesn't take itself seriously and this is one of them. In a decade where there isn't much call for Private dicks the jokes in this book are no longer stale or overly clichéd. Just puns and more puns. I couldn't help but chuckle out loud as I read. It was a quick read, but a definite mood pick me up.
December 4, 2019
Detective Mac Slade is a wise cracking, smart mouthed P.I. in New York. He plays the tough guy in the style of the 40s. He has a girl Friday named Tuesday. Women find him irresistible and can’t keep their hands off of him. He is cynical but straight. Nothing surprises him.
He is hired by a great looking dame, with legs that don’t quit, to find her missing brother. In his search he runs across quite the assortment of characters. Tough guys, tough cops, dames with gams to don’t quit…at any time, dead bodies and more.
This is a parody of the P.I. genre made famous by Chandler, Hammett, and Cain. Mac is similar to Marlowe, Hammer, Spade and The Continental Op.
If you want a fun read with clichés, snappy patter and action, this is the book. As the cover says, “He’s hard as a rock, tough as nails, dense as concrete.” This felt a little like the movie “Airplane” with the dialogue and characters.
Unfortunately I have found that of the 8 titles that were to be in the series only 2 were ever written and printed. I do have the other one! Yay!
He is hired by a great looking dame, with legs that don’t quit, to find her missing brother. In his search he runs across quite the assortment of characters. Tough guys, tough cops, dames with gams to don’t quit…at any time, dead bodies and more.
This is a parody of the P.I. genre made famous by Chandler, Hammett, and Cain. Mac is similar to Marlowe, Hammer, Spade and The Continental Op.
If you want a fun read with clichés, snappy patter and action, this is the book. As the cover says, “He’s hard as a rock, tough as nails, dense as concrete.” This felt a little like the movie “Airplane” with the dialogue and characters.
Unfortunately I have found that of the 8 titles that were to be in the series only 2 were ever written and printed. I do have the other one! Yay!
November 14, 2020
When I was 11 or 12, I first read this book. It's not that great, but it remains the book I have reread the most. I don't remember why I read it seven times, but I did.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews