Dark Mirror

Mike Faraday

by Basil Copper

Californian private eye Mike Faraday reckons the case is routine, until a silenced gun cuts down Horvis the antique dealer and involves Mike in a trail of violence and murder. The story has memorable Dan Tucker, the big police chief with the penchant for green apples; MacNamara, the sour-faced surgeon; sadistic Captain Jacoby; and Uncle Tom, the huge negro with the silenced automatic. Between the violence and the girls, Faraday's sardonic humour enlivens the plot.

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Basil Copper was an English writer and former journalist and newspaper editor. He has written over 50 books and scripts. In addition to fantasy and horror, Copper is known for his series of Solar Pons stories continuing the character created by August Derleth.

Copper edited a 1982 two-volume omnibus collection of Derleth's stories of the 'Pontine' canon, published by Arkham House, a publishing firm founded by Derleth himself and chiefly publishing weird fiction (such as Cthulhu Mythos tales); in that edition, Copper "edited" most of the tales in ways that many Pontine aficionados found objectionable[citation needed]. A later omnibus, The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition, was issued in 2000 under the imprint of Mycroft & Moran (a name which is itself a Holmesian jest).

He also wrote the long-running hard-boiled detective stories of "Mike Faraday" (58 novels from 1966 to 1988).

Copper has received many honours in recent years. In 1979, the Mark Twain Society of America elected him a Knight of Mark Twain for his outstanding "contribution to modern fiction", while the Praed Street Irregulars have twice honoured him for his work on the Solar Pons series. He has been a member of the Crime Writer's Association for over thirty years, serving as chairman in 1981/82 and on its committee for a total of seven years.

In early 2008, a bio-bibliography was published on him: Basil Copper: A Life in Books, compiled and edited by Stephen Jones.

In March 2010, Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper was launched at the Brighton World Horror Convention as a two-volume set by PS Publishing.

Reviews

[Linda Strong · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE DARK MIRROR was originally published in 1966 and was the first in a series of 52 featuring Private Investigator Mike Faraday. The author pays homage to the hard-boiled, wise-cracking PIs that were quite well received in the 1940s.

Faraday's shabby office is in downtown Los Angeles. He has a need for enough money to pay the bills, head for hard liquor, and beautiful blond secretary/part-time girl friend.

In his first adventure, Mike is newly employed by an antiques dealer to find some objects of art that were last seen in the possession of man who was murdered. Before Mike can leave his meeting, the dealer is murdered.

This murder leads to the first murder, leads to yet other murders and Mike, working alongside Captain Dan Tucker of the County Police, must unravel all the threads.

This is fast-paced, non-stop action from beginning to end. With regards to this author's writing style, I really enjoy the feeling of the old-time crime novels. The language is very true to that time period. Mike is such a likable character. He has a rough exterior, a man's man, but the ladies like him too. He's willing to bend the rules when he feels he needs to, but is actually honest to a fault. It's his mouth that generally gets him into trouble at every turn.

Many thanks to Endeavour Press / Netgalley who provided a digital copy.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

On one hand this novel has an incredible story and in depth characters and relationships that make it 5 star
On the other hand the blatant racism made me uncomfortable and cringe every time they referred to blacks as 'coons' and worse. I realize this was written in 1966 (I think) but to think that was fine at that time is mind bending.
Also, although this is about LA police, British vernacular distracts as does the editing--twowords together without aspace. Constantly.
Those aspects make it 1 star so I settled on 3

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Dark Mirror" by Basil Copper was the first of 52 (count them) Mike Faraday PI novels that he published between 1966 and 1988. It was also Copper's first published novel, although he had previously published numerous short stories and collections of such. The cover of the book contains the phrase "Move over Marlowe, there's a new P.I. in town" and there is little question that Copper's Faraday is a take-off on Chandler's Philip Marlowe as dozens of PIs invented in the fifties and sixties and even later were. In homage to Chandler's vision, Copper, a British writer who had never been to Los Angeles, placed his own PI in Los Angeles. This city is filled with drinks that taste of limes and bourbon and dusk and neon signs and smog. "The Dark Mirror" also pays homage to Hammett's "Maltese Falcon" by centering part of its plot around a fabulous statute that everyone seems to want to get their hands on.

Copper was not Chandler or Hammett, not by a long shot, but "Dark Mirror" is still a fun, enjoyable read for hardboiled fiction fans. Faraday as a PI fits all the stereotypes. He is not that successful monetary- wise. He is cynical. He cooperates with the law, but doesn't tell the law everything that goes on. The ladies seem to swoon at his presence. He has a terrific sense of humor that neither the lawmen nor the hoods seem to enjoy as much as the reader does.

The book begins with a typical cliched hardboiled atmosphere: "It was hot in Jinty's Bar, a damned sight too hot for my comfort. Even the ice in my drink looked too tired to compete any more by the time it reached me." Besides being a scorcher, there's little to do in the office he shares with another PI. They take turns walking around the block when one of them has a client there. When he goes to the office, he adds scratch marks to his desktop and counts the stains on the ceiling. But, when someone phones, he can "smell the folding money clear across from where he was phoning." What sets his office apart is Stella, the secretary, "a honey-blonde with all the right statistics." When he is not busy, Faraday occupies his time watching her figure.

The descriptions, particularly of the female species, are a bit more risqué than one would find in Chandler's work. This series, after all, started in the mid-sixties, in the post-Spillane world. When Faraday sits in the library, he notes that: "A pert little librarian with a high, tip- tilted bust clip-clopped out." It is amazing how often the women in this book manage to stand by lighted windows with almost transparent dresses on and how often their dressing gowns fall open.

The book also has humorous descriptions that refer to movies and such. For example, a rich man's home is described thus: "The whole place was like Xanadu in Citizen Kane and I kept waiting for the camera boom to come down out of the ceiling." There is also an apple- eating police detective who Faraday becomes buddies with as well as other officers who work him over into a pulpy mess. When Faraday visits a woman, he notes that her bedroom was like a movie set: "To complete the M.G.M. touch there was a blue fox fur coat laid casually across the bed." One landlady he encounters "had iron-gray hair, a face like Joe Stalin and a cigarette burned in a corner of her mouth."

There are points in the novel in which the plot gets a bit convoluted and Faraday jumps from one line of investigation to another without explanation, but that is not unusual for the genre. In the end, while this clearly is not a classic, it is a fun romp with a PI that is little known in America, although with 52 novels in the series, the British must have eaten this stuff up.

[Eva Bargeron]

Very Good

The book was quite good, it kept my interest throughout. Looking forward to reading more from this author. Mike had an interesting way of doing things.