FORGOTTEN BOOK: HOT TIME IN OLD TOWN by Mike McQuay

FORGOTTEN BOOK: HOT TIME IN OLD TOWN by Mike McQuay. Bantam Books, 1981

This is the 76th in my series of Forgotten Books.

For a while I knew I wanted to do a Mike McQuay book for the Forgotten Book series. Mike was pretty well forgotten even when he was new. And I was torn between doing LIFEKEEPER (his first novel) or this one (his second book and the first of four Matthew Swain private eye novels).

The other day I found a copy of HTIOT at Half Price Books and it was in good shape. Frequently the copies are read to death. I bought it even though I have a signed copy just so I could read this one and keep my old one in good shape.

Mike was a friend of mine. I met him in Oklahoma City about the time this book came out primarily because C. J. Cherryh said that she thought Mike and I would hit it off. We met and we did hit it off. We watched movies, talked books, went to minor league baseball games. He taught writing workshops and I attended whenever I was in town. It was great.

He won an award for MEMORIES, a fantastic novel you should all go out and read. He wrote a lot of men’s adventure fiction, some Hardy Boys, and lots of other stuff sometimes under his name, sometimes not. His last novel was RICHTER 10 with Arthur C. Clarke. It was published after he died.

Mike McQuay died because he was a writer. As such he had no health care. When the pain in his chest started he ignored it. For three days! He finally decided to go to the doctor but he never made it there. He was 46 years old! It was a damned shame! And now 16 years later, he still would not have health care and he would die again.

Enough soap box. This book is the first of the Matthew Swain, private eye in the future books. They are set somewhere in Texas and it is not a pretty future. The cops are for hire. If you want a crime investigated, pay them. Murders are almost never investigated because it is just too expensive and no one is ever arrested anyway so the fees are high.

Swain does some investigation work and manages to make ends meet. One night he hears the police scanner talk about a murder at a place where a former client of his lived. Sure enough, dead body is former client. Soon a scene straight out of THE BIG SLEEP ensues when he meets the client’s father, an old man barely alive and his wicked daughter. You almost hear Bogart laughing.

Things get good and they get bad. His good blind friend George gets killed because of Swain’s actions. Other people get hurt. Swain nearly dies. Good old fashioned noir stuff but with batter cars and lasers. Oh, and mutants who live in Old Town.

Favors are called in and Swain finds himself face to face with a megalomaniac security magnate named Charon who wants to send him down the River Styx. And he nearly does. Lots of folks die.

I enjoyed this one again, since I had not read it since 1981. It seemed longer than its 214 pages, perhaps because McQuay did not utilize the short choppy sentences frequently employed by noir writers.

And yes, Swain is named for Dwight Swain, who was one of Mike’s writing instructors at the University of Oklahoma. Swain was also an instructor of Neal Barrett, Jr. when he attended that same university.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.