Dead Game

Ed Noon #3

by Michael Avallone

ED NOON MYSTERY #3 Dead Game “With a scream, she cut loose. She didn’t know how to handle a gun except for the old fashioned idea that all you had to do was keep pulling the trigger and you were bound to hit something.” --Ed Noon, Private Eye A redhead, a brunette, a missing undiscovered Poe diary, and a murdered third baseman in an exhibition ball game with the New York Giants are the weird ingredients for the mad behavior of Mr. Arongio, the antique dealer who will stop at nothing to acquire a rare find. This one is studded with violence and bloody collisions. And two unforgettable heroines, Mimi Tango and Kitty Arongio, cats’ paws in the game of death. Ed Noon The Adventures of Ed Noon, Private Eye, spanning over 30 novels written between 1953 and 1990. Noon starts out dirt poor with a tiny office in Midtown Manhattan (his “Mouse Auditorium”) but success moves him to better digs, with a lovely secretary (Melissa Mercer) and, eventually, the most important client of the President of the United States. The series concludes with a daring turn towards science fiction in the last two novels. Through it all, the wisecracking Noon is a movie and baseball-obsessed romantic who always fights the good fight. And, more often than not, wins.

Genres: Crime, Action, Mystery

Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Also wrote Nick Carter: Killmaster series under Nick Carter alias with others

Michael Angelo Avallone was a prolific American author of mystery and secret agent fiction, and novelizations based on TV and films. He claimed a lifetime output over 1,000 works, including novels, short stories, articles, published under his own name or 17+ pseudonyms.
His first novel, The Tall Dolores 1953 introduced Ed Noon PI. After three dozen more, the most recent was 1989. The final volume, "Since Noon Yesterday" is, as of 2005, unpublished.
Tie-ins included Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-0, Mannix, Friday the 13th Part III, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and even The Partridge Family. In late 1960s novellas featured U.N.C.L.E.-like INTREX. He is sometimes cited incorrectly as the creator of Man from U.N.C.L.E. (as in the January 1967 issue of The Saint Magazine), or having died March 1.
As Troy Conway, Rod Damon: The Coxeman novel series 1967-73, parodied Man from UNCLE. An unusual entry was the novelization of the 1982 TV mini-series, A Woman Called Golda, the life of Golda Meir.
Among the many pseudonyms that Michael Avallone used (male and female) were: Mile Avalione, Mike Avalone, Nick Carter, Troy Conway, Priscilla Dalton, Mark Dane, Jeanne-Anne dePre, Dora Highland, Stuart Jason, Steve Michaels, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone, John Patrick, Vance Stanton, Sidney Stuart, Max Walker, and Lee Davis Willoughby.
From 1962-5, Avallone edited the Mystery Writers of America newsletter. Personal Life:
He married 1949 Lucille Asero (one son; marriage dissolved), 1960 Fran Weinstein (one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/tri...

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third Ed Noon book.

Ed Noon is hired to tail a cheating husband, or so he is told by the guy's wife. But instead of visiting a suspected girlfriend, the man heads to the Polo Grounds instead, to take in an exhibition baseball game between the New York Giants and a visiting minor-league team.

Then in the ninth inning, the minor league team's third baseman is stabbed to death, and the guy Ed's been following rushes onto the field to search the dead man's uniform before getting away. Ed is left with the questions of who murdered the third baseman, and what was the man he was tailing was looking for.

As Ed Noon begins his search, to complicate things a cop gets killed, putting Ed on the bad side of his old friend Police Captain Michael Monks. Ed runs into a beautiful redhead and an equally beautiful brunette, the latter named Mimi Tango. We move along and there's a lot of banter, a few fistfights, and Ed gets hit on the head and knocked out a couple of times,as all good PI's should.

A fun and compelling read.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Noon is a typical pulp era private eye operating out an office so small he called it the mouse auditorium. In later novels in the series, he actually moves to a more normal sized office and hires a secretary, Melissa. But he's still the same wisecracking Joe. In still later novels in the series, he becomes a super spy and meets space aliens. But in this book, he's still the original swashbuckling PI.

The story begins with a shadowing job for a suspicious wife. Noon tells the reader that the wife gave a great description: "He was as big and as wide as Broadway with a nose like the pistol grip of an old Western shooting iron. His mustache was early Wild West too. Except for his dark olive look, he could pass easily for a reincarnation of Buffalo Bill." Ed Noon books are filled with such wild and colorful descriptions.

Noon follows the husband right to the Polo Grounds where the New York Giants played ball in the fifties before they headed west to the Golden Gate. "For a guy whose wife suspected him of horsing around, he was behaving pretty funny," Noon explains. A ball player is murdered leaving the field and it's the husband Noon had been following who gets to the body first, either killing him or searching him. But before that happens, Noon takes the reader through the play by play of the game. Yup, Avallone is a baseball fan. No doubt about it.

When the call goes in to headquarters, Captain Monks can't believe its Noon again with another homicide. It's a talent he has, a rare talent. Monks isn't laughing much later as dead officers and dead ball players start to add up and Noon is getting "outfoxed by a little dame." Noon "wasn't making any more headway than a revivalist at an orgy."

Noon returns to his office and finds a cyclone has ripped through it and "standing in the center of the mess, as unconcerned as Sergeant York in. Turkey-shooting match, was the skinniest, sexiest brunette I've ever laid my private eyes on," Noon explains.

It's a well written and compelling story mixing hardboiled mystery and baseball and filled with a liberal dose of Noonish humor. Terrific stuff!

[Redrighthand · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a cheap paperback casually selected for it's sexy cover from the spinner rack of a neighborhood 5 & 10, this one punched all the right buttons you look for in a top-shelf gumshoe thriller- with baseball, Edgar Allan Poe, enhanced interrogation, and foreigners with big droopy mustaches masterfully figured in.
Never even heard of this guy, so it's going to be swell checking out his other books.

[Sean Harding · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avallone Assignment #3
Ed Noon #3
Another hard boiled crime from the 50's as this series continues- it's been a while since I dipped into this pond, and this one did not grab me as much as the other two, but well, it was mildly diverting, of very dated.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was pretty close to a thriller rather than the pulp crime novel it was intended. Really enjoyed. Also enjoyed some of those great lines!

[alansplace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good detective story in the noir tradition.