Don't Catch Me: An Andy and Araby Blake Mystery

by Richard Pitts Powell

Antique dealer Andy Blake and his sharpshooting wife Arab stumble across a faux antique chair - and end up tangling with Nazi-obsessed millionaire, a gregarious gunman, a rival antique dealer, and bombshell blonde.

100 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1943

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's right before WWII, and antiques dealer Andy spots what looks like an antique chair on the porch of a farmhouse. It turns out to be a fake, and so does the ersatz farmer's daughter selling the chair. Andy's wife, Arabella, insists that Andy buy the chair. This gets them into trouble with a museum collection, gangsters, corrupt antique handlers, and Nazi agents.

Sort of a light weight Nick and Nora Charles knock off, but witty and entertaining.

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

My partner bought me a kindle for my birthday, which surprised me: I hadn’t known I needed one. (With a house straining under the number of books stored in it, what we really need is a machine that transforms solid, physical books into digital form, and then reconstitutes them into their physical form when we want to read them. But I have never seen such a machine, not even on Star Trek.) I have downloaded a number of free works and have read a short story, but this was my first purchase and illustrates one of the dangers of the kindle: having read something about Don’t Catch Me I would probably have bought it if I had come across it in a second-hand bookshop (which is unlikely), but because I could just look it up, notice it was half the price of a real book and press the screen, I did: it is very easy to buy stuff on a whim. So I bought this American War-time thriller. It is about Nazis and antiques (is there an Antique Mystery genre?), but, although a 1940s American thriller it is not hard boiled or pulp, it is light and breezy. The married couple who are the heroes of the adventure are like the bickering couples of pre-War Hollywood romantic comedies: I could imagine Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell playing the leads. But, to be honest, the banter is more good natured than witty. That’s about it...I doubt if I will remember anything about it after a few months but there were further books with the same characters, so maybe there is an Antiques Mystery genre. Maybe in a later book they foil a wicked communist plot to collectivize the antiques trade, but I doubt if I will ever bother to find out. (And why had I heard about it? Apparently Orson Welles adapted it for a film but never got the finance to make it. I have no idea what it would have been like.) (And reading it on a kindle was fine: the form suited rushing through without thinking. But will reading Henry James be compatible with a kindle?)

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

First in the series of Arab and Andy Blake Mysteries - all of which have been wonderful. Notable period details in this one are references to Lew Tendler's restaurant on Broad, the 'Terrible-Tempered Dr. Barnes' who bought paintings before the Museum could, "Operative 17" and Sumner Welles.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: antique dealer Andy Blake and his wife Arab tangle with a Nazi-obsessed millionaire, and others too.