James Meese (1)

Chester Drum is Stephen Marlowe's globe-trotting Hardboiled Private Eye. This volume is more about Islamic terror and playing Lawrence of Arabia than it is a murder mystery. Though published in 1957, the taking of 157 people including Americans hostage inside an Islamic center foreshadowed the hostage taking in a Mideast embassy twenty years later. There is a twisted love triangle, a belly-dancing diplomat, a kidnapping, double-crosses, and triple-crosses, but mostly it's about an expedition show more into the belly of a foreign culture and the international reverberations. It's an easy read, although the plot lines and connections seem a bit forced together as if separate stories were put together. show less