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Peter Chambers #14
The Name is Chambers
Six stories complete and unabridged.
Far Cry
Candlestick
The Wrong Touch
One Little Bullet
Kudos for the Kid
Skip a Beat
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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About the author
Henry Kane
218 books12 followersAuthor Henry Kane was a lawyer who seemed to prefer writing. In his career, wrote over 60 novels, including about 30 featuring Peter Chambers. Other short-lived series characters were PIs Marla Trent and retired NYPD detective inspector turned P.I. McGregor. He also wrote the movie adaptations for Ed McBain's 87th Precinct's Cop Hater and The Mugger. And, in light of his experience with Chambers, Kane was the perfect choice to pen an original novel starring television's Peter Gunn.
He also wrote under the pseudonyms Anthony McCall, Kenneth R. McKay, and Mario J. Sagola. He is the creator of Peter Chambers, a private eye in New York City, McGregor, an ex-cop turned private eye in New York City, and Maria Trent. Kane also contributed to the series of 'Ellery Queen' novels ghostwritten by other authors.
He also wrote under the pseudonyms Anthony McCall, Kenneth R. McKay, and Mario J. Sagola. He is the creator of Peter Chambers, a private eye in New York City, McGregor, an ex-cop turned private eye in New York City, and Maria Trent. Kane also contributed to the series of 'Ellery Queen' novels ghostwritten by other authors.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 15, 2017
The great paperback era of the fifties produced dozens of private eyes. Peter Chambers was a man about town. These stories are filled with corpses and tall blondes stacked inside of gold party dresses. They are filled with guys like a gent named Max Keith brained by a gold candlestick in the study.
These are along the lines of classic who-done-it tales and are filled with dialogue and are very quick moving. Chambers cooperates with the local police, unusual for a private eye. He rushes about interviewing witnesses and putting clues together. All of these stories are good solid PI stories and you won't go wrong reading any of them. Don't expect noir or pulpiness, just good PI stories with mobsters and dames and a cynical detective.
These are along the lines of classic who-done-it tales and are filled with dialogue and are very quick moving. Chambers cooperates with the local police, unusual for a private eye. He rushes about interviewing witnesses and putting clues together. All of these stories are good solid PI stories and you won't go wrong reading any of them. Don't expect noir or pulpiness, just good PI stories with mobsters and dames and a cynical detective.
November 21, 2022
Not one book, but a collection of six short stories ranging from 1947 to 1954. All have Peter Chambers, Private Investigator, as the lead. The physical copy I read, which matches the photo with this review, comes from 1957 and has really small font for each tale, so you're getting your money's worth from reading this. I know I did; I paid five dollars for this at a paperback show.
The protagonist has a great voice, with his inner dialogue matching the sarcasm and weariness of his dialogue with characters. This was enjoyable read and I'd definitely be on the look for other books featuring this P.I.
"Far Cry" (1953): A seductive widow asks Chambers to find out about her husband's will and things quickly go downhill for the detective. Fun, but not memorable, but one heck of a closing line. GRADE: C
"Candlestick" (1954): Press Agent Max Keith has had his head bashed in by a candlestick. Who used it and why are Peter's problems. However, unknown to everyone else, Peter has a problem closer at hand that might have info on the murder. An average mystery. GRADE: C+
"The Wrong Touch" (1953): A man high in the mob hires Chambers to investigate why the body of an assistant D.A. was found dead in his house. Great mystery with fantastic ending. GRADE: A+
"One Little Bullet" (1953): A bullet kills a patron at a jazz club Chambers is at and a great closed room mystery begins. The killer is in the room, but who is it. Another winning tale. GRADE: A+
"Kudos for the Kid" (1947): Chambers is the wrong man with a missing earring. Short, but solid. GRADE: B
"Skip a Beat" (1954): Hired as bodyguard to protect his client after he reveals some "startling" information. Naturally things don't go well for Peter. Decent. Overall grade: B-
The protagonist has a great voice, with his inner dialogue matching the sarcasm and weariness of his dialogue with characters. This was enjoyable read and I'd definitely be on the look for other books featuring this P.I.
"Far Cry" (1953): A seductive widow asks Chambers to find out about her husband's will and things quickly go downhill for the detective. Fun, but not memorable, but one heck of a closing line. GRADE: C
"Candlestick" (1954): Press Agent Max Keith has had his head bashed in by a candlestick. Who used it and why are Peter's problems. However, unknown to everyone else, Peter has a problem closer at hand that might have info on the murder. An average mystery. GRADE: C+
"The Wrong Touch" (1953): A man high in the mob hires Chambers to investigate why the body of an assistant D.A. was found dead in his house. Great mystery with fantastic ending. GRADE: A+
"One Little Bullet" (1953): A bullet kills a patron at a jazz club Chambers is at and a great closed room mystery begins. The killer is in the room, but who is it. Another winning tale. GRADE: A+
"Kudos for the Kid" (1947): Chambers is the wrong man with a missing earring. Short, but solid. GRADE: B
"Skip a Beat" (1954): Hired as bodyguard to protect his client after he reveals some "startling" information. Naturally things don't go well for Peter. Decent. Overall grade: B-
July 2, 2019
Six short stories about Henry Kane’s private detective character Peter Chambers. Anthony Boucher blurbed it as “A phenomenally generous volume of tales neatly plotted and blithely told.” Fair enough.
It’s of interest because it represents Chambers’ early career. This is a 1968 edition, but the book dates back to 1957. All of the stories were originally published in 1953 and ’54 except for one from 1947, the year in which the first Chambers novel was released. Kane’s style was already in full flower.
Kane is obsessed with description—of women, of course, but also of rooms. Every room Chambers steps into gets a paragraph of inventory; some of them get half a page. And his description of things is insistently clever:
“Her eyes were blue and shining, her lips red and shining, her hair gold and shining.”
A fellow who talks to himself that way makes an amusing first-person narrator. But when he keeps this ironic attitude in descriptions of dead bodies, fistfights, and races against time, it puts events at a distance. The performance of the raconteur is what gets attention.
So, other than being a chatterbox, Chambers has little presence on the page. But he moves quickly from one thing to the next with a minimum of explanation. And Kane ingeniously uses the sex interludes, drinking bouts, and critiques of interior design as misdirection to sustain the mystery plot. The plotting is fair-play—the reader gets all the clues—but the clues don’t stand out amid all the inventories of furniture and body parts.
This is smart writing.
Apparently devotees of private eye fiction look down on Kane a bit. Maybe his use of an urban American milieu—a world of gambling houses, showgirls, cigar-chewing police detectives, and gangsters with tommy guns—makes readers think that Kane is working the same tough streets as Hammett, Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and so on. But if he constructs his crime stories to function primarily as a game, then he is working in an older vein, Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, which was elaborated by Agatha Christie et al into a sort of melodrama of manners. Don’t think of him as a follower of Chandler or the guy who wrote THE GLASS KEY. He’s more like the Hammett who wrote THE THIN MAN.
It’s of interest because it represents Chambers’ early career. This is a 1968 edition, but the book dates back to 1957. All of the stories were originally published in 1953 and ’54 except for one from 1947, the year in which the first Chambers novel was released. Kane’s style was already in full flower.
Kane is obsessed with description—of women, of course, but also of rooms. Every room Chambers steps into gets a paragraph of inventory; some of them get half a page. And his description of things is insistently clever:
“Her eyes were blue and shining, her lips red and shining, her hair gold and shining.”
A fellow who talks to himself that way makes an amusing first-person narrator. But when he keeps this ironic attitude in descriptions of dead bodies, fistfights, and races against time, it puts events at a distance. The performance of the raconteur is what gets attention.
So, other than being a chatterbox, Chambers has little presence on the page. But he moves quickly from one thing to the next with a minimum of explanation. And Kane ingeniously uses the sex interludes, drinking bouts, and critiques of interior design as misdirection to sustain the mystery plot. The plotting is fair-play—the reader gets all the clues—but the clues don’t stand out amid all the inventories of furniture and body parts.
This is smart writing.
Apparently devotees of private eye fiction look down on Kane a bit. Maybe his use of an urban American milieu—a world of gambling houses, showgirls, cigar-chewing police detectives, and gangsters with tommy guns—makes readers think that Kane is working the same tough streets as Hammett, Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and so on. But if he constructs his crime stories to function primarily as a game, then he is working in an older vein, Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, which was elaborated by Agatha Christie et al into a sort of melodrama of manners. Don’t think of him as a follower of Chandler or the guy who wrote THE GLASS KEY. He’s more like the Hammett who wrote THE THIN MAN.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews