Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Frank Gruber was an enormously prolific author of pulp fiction. A stalwart contributor to Black Mask magazine, he also wrote novels, producing as many as four a year during the 1940s. His best-known character was Oliver Quade, “the Human Encyclopedia,” whose adventures were collected in Brass Knuckles (1966), and will soon be republished in ebook format as Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,featuring brand-new material, from MysteriousPress.com, Open Road Integrated Media, and Black Mask magazine.
Gruber foi um escritor prolixo de romances populares e de guiões cinematográficos. Não particularmente talentoso mas longe de ser medíocre. Este livro lê-se com facilidade (sem grande deleite diga-se em abono da verdade) e a intriga não é totalmente má. Parece um filme policial da série B (ou C?) com personagens jocosas e desenvoltas.
An okay book, not really my type of mystery. Sort or more hard-boiled than cozy. The heroes are tough-talking men who do some not-quite-legal things to survive the hard times they find themselves in. The writing is okay, although there are a few episodes that are more filler than useful points in moving the plot along (a full page about hands played in a card game could have been cut for instance.)
An okay mystery/crime book, with typical characters and a very witty main character/detective, Johnny Fletcher. The main duo, Johnny and Sam, is the best thing in this story, but the story itself has nothing special.