Rude Boys

Mitch Roberts Crime Novel #3

by Gaylord Dold

Gaylord Dold, hailed by Loren D. Estleman as "the best new stylist to enter the crowded field of private-eye fiction, and one of its most daring innovators," brings us another literate and suspenseful adventure for his remarkable sleuth, Mitch Roberts. Rude Boys, like Dold's recent A Penny for the Old Guy, finds American cowboy Roberts in London, "looking for his life" and "trying to fall in love" with English widow Amanda Smith. He is doing some work for Amanda's lawyer friend, Hillary Root, when Hillary's Jamaican half brother is found brutally murdered.
The crime is a grisly puzzle from the start. The man was in the hospital, well on the way to recovering from the mysterious illness that had put him there, when someone crept into his room and left him covered with blood, a gaping slash across his neck.
Hillary is deep in a seemingly hopeless case, the defense of another Jamaican man accused of robbery and murder. Fighting prejudice as a female in the ranks of British barristers, and as a half-Jamaican female at that, Hillary now begins to receive horrifying and wordless threats, like the "gift" of a slaughtered cat. Sympathy with her burdens impels Roberts to travel to Jamaica, seeking the roots of these possibly connected events.
Although his brief trip produces a number of answers as well as insight into the lives of Jamaicans at home and abroad, another murder takes place before Mitch is able to unravel the tight skein of horror and death and to set a strange kind of justice in motion.

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Gaylord Dold was born in Kansas and raised in southern California during the good old days. He was educated at the University of Kansas, the University of California, and the London School of Economics, where he took an advanced degree in international law. Before becoming a professional writer, he worked as a chauffeur, theater usher, legal services attorney, law professor and volunteer mentor. He is the co-founder and managing editor of Watermark Press which published works like Leaving Las Vegas by John O’Brien, which later became a film directed by Mike Figgis, starring Nicolas Cage and Elizabeth Shue. Dold has published eighteen novels and five travel guides. Many of his crime novels have received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist; many have been praised by Marilyn Stasio and others in the New York Times Book Review and in newspapers like the Portland Oregonian, The Washington Post and Boston Herald. His novel Schedule Two was picked as the best crime novel of 1996 by the Portland Oregonian, while his legal thriller The Devil to Pay was picked as one the best ten crime novels of 1998. His novels have been published in Japan, England, and Brazil. Dold has read his work throughout the United States and has conducted numerous writing workshops. He published The Last Man in Berlin in 2004, a novel set in pre-Nazi Germany during the early 1930s. Most recently he has completed and published three contemporary crime novels, two featuring ex-Marine Jack Kilgore, and one a dystopian science fiction thriller called The Swarming Stage.
After twenty-five years of non-stop work, Dold has, since 2006, taken time off to travel and write five books, including novels, a memoir, and a YA that takes place in Wyoming. At present he continues researching non-fiction books about fly fishing on the old Mountain Man rendezvous sites and along the Continental Divide, writing science fiction, and is busy on a new fiction suspense novel about dream research
These days, Dold is at home on the southern prairie. He is an adept fly fisherman, an ardent gardener and an amateur pianist and guitarist. He rides horses poorly and loves dogs. He continues to travel widely in the Caribbean, the south Pacific and the western Rockies.

Visit the author at gaylorddold.com

Reviews

[CAROL · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dold was married to Megumi from my CC bookclub. Not bad, an easy-reading mystery. Justice not always come at the hands of the legal system.

The 1st murder victim was killed twice: 1st by poison, then had his throat slashed. As I was reading this book we watched episode #3 of the Inspector Morse TV series from England. It was shown here in 1993 but was copyrighted in 1987 there. Exact same story line! Dead man was killed twice: 1st by morphine poisoning, then stabbed with a crucifix. The Morse episode was called "Service of all the Dead".