cover image The Secret Past: Mini-Bound

The Secret Past: Mini-Bound

Arnold Marmor. SOS Publications, $6.95 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-938422-23-5

This mini-bound mystery proves that some people still write 'em the way they used to. Narrator Brian Hickman, ace reporter for Profiles magazine, is assigned to do a puff job on the late Tucker Monroe, rising TV comic who died in a fall from his New York apartment. Hickman soon finds that practically everyone who knew Monroe thought him a cad. Did he fall or was he pushed? A shadowy mobster appears, Hickman gets invoved with Monroe's first agenta lady wronged, various skeletons emerge from Monroe's dark past and though he's warned to cool it, Hickman carries on his investigation. Some of the characterization is shaky, the New York color is oddly blanched and the ending has more than a whiff of The Maltese Falcon. Marmor keeps the story moving at a nice clip, however, and sometimes the laconic, tough-guy style works. December