The Giant Kill

Max Roper #4

by Kin Platt

Max Roper, durable investigator, is sapped, doped and imprisoned on a boat apparently used by a mysterious Oriental for business purposes. The point of this caper is to have Max carry a warning to basketball superstar Jo-Jo Gonzaga that he must throw the championship play-off. When Gonzaga is shot and killed in his own fabulous and eccentrically designed home after his team wins the second game of the series, Roper decides to find the hoods who had abducted him.

Max discovers that a lot of people wanted Gonzaga dead and that there is more to this murder than the gangland routine of forcing a team win at any cost.

For example: Jules Belmont, miserly millionaire who likes to bet and bet big. He also hates to lose—a bet or a dame. Sandy Shaw, a bright and sexy whiz kid who can beat the computer in her specialty of voice prints. Larry LaSalle, her boss, resident expert at UCLA, the man who had designed the computer which can identify any person from his speech patterns. Barbara Belmont, niece of Jules. A hippie girl who lives at sea and tries to keep Roper the same. Frankie Wu, a shadowy Oriental who may be part of an international heroin-smuggling ring.

Then there are the other characters Roper knows only as The Rube, Gorilla and Wolfman. He trails this trio to Mexico, where more violence erupts. Then the trail leads back to a beautiful blonde singer in the Gaslight Club in Los Angeles, where there is more violence. There is Tom Power, the ex-basketballer, a man who remembers the favors Gonzaga had done for him.

Not to be forgotten among this provocatively mixed cast, are the Great Danes who owned by Gonzaga. Roper has a feeling they will be in a the final kill and only hopes he can beat them to it when he brings down Gonzaga’s murderer.

176 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Pseudonyms: Kirby Carr, Guy West, Alan West, Guy York & Wesley Simon York

Kin Platt (1911–2003) was the author of the perennially popular I Can Read Book Big Max, as well as several outstanding young-adult novels and the Max Roper mystery series for adults. Mr. Platt was also a noted cartoonist.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_Platt

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his Max Roper series, Platt takes the classic hardboiled detective and moves him into the seventies in sunny Southern California. Each of the books in this series revolve a bit around a sport and here that
sport is basketball. Shaving points is generally frowned upon but when the star of the Lakers is told to take a powder or die, things get a little dicey.

Platt manages to throw in a bit of seventies nostalgia into this mystery including the swinging singles scene in the Marina, celebrity parties, new age theories, and more. But there's plenty of murder, mayhem, conspiracy, and nights in Nuevo Laredo.

Platt's novels are not necessarily unique but they are always good solid reading and a lot of fun.