Marvin H. Albert (1924–1996)

An ex-soldier, mercenary, arms dealer, and gunrunner gets out of prison and is asked to lead a small group to rescue an American businessman's daughter and wife from a rebel band in Morocco. His eventual "army" has a hardened female reporter (fresh from Vietnam) on board, a former Central American death squad member, a young German trying to make amends for his father's time as a concentration camp commandant, an Italian gangster, an ex-American soldier who made a fortune by stealing show more supplies in Vietnam, and a half-French half-Berber whose clan is the ancestral enemy of the group holding the hostages. Of course, by now you're thinking that this is pretty much the usual formula--take all these disparate types, unite them around a single goal, and see who shines and who cracks. And who lives and who dies. And of course MacAlister does just that. It's the way he does it that counts. He is an absolute master of telling a fast-paced story (I should say telling it fast enough that you don't have time to linger over the improbabilities that keep the plot moving). There isn't one author in a hundred who could take this material and tell the story this well. If you're looking for a few hours of satisfying escape, this is it. MacAlister's people and his settings, though not always drawn in great detail, are nevertheless convincing. You do end up understanding each of these characters personal motivations--and you will cheer or cry as they succeed or fail.

But it's no wonder the book is so good--Ian MacAlister is one of the many pseudonyms of the superb Marvin H. Albert, who seemed to be able to write well in any genre he chose. I haven't read a bad book by him yet. It's sad to see how few copies of his works LibraryThing members actually own. I'm doing my personal best to correct that! show less

As hurricane Irma approached Florida, even though I was a good distance inland, it was a bit unsettling.

Tony Rome with Frank Sinatra turned up on the broadcast TV channel Movies!, and I recorded it and watched it Saturday afternoon Sept. 10 as the storm neared Florida.

It had been a while since I'd seen it, having first learned of it in Jon Tuska's The Detective in Hollywood when I was a kid. It came in the wake of Paul Newman's Harper as part of a mini-detective cycle in the late '60s. I show more caught it finally on cable years after that.

I'd forgotten much of it as I re-watched the film, which was about all I could really focus on that pre-Irma afternoon with all the hurricane prep I could manage already accomplished.

Maybe the Miami setting played a small role. It was kind of relaxing watching Sinatra drive Jill St. John around in a convertible on happier and sunny Florida days.

The storm passed through in the wee hours of Sept. 11-12 , bringing us a lot of wind, but we survived and were lucky. We lost power 36 hours or so and had water and canned ravioli, so we fared OK.

I plucked the novel the movie was based on from my shelves. Somewhere along the way I picked up a tie-in edition of the 1960 book but had never read it.

I was pleasantly surprised. The novel's really deftly plotted and fairly character rich. I suspect Albert was a Raymond Chandler fan, but resemblances are really a tip of the fedora, I believe.

Anthony Rome, the hard-boiled narrator protagonist, is an ex-Miami cop with a gambling problem. He lives on a houseboat called the Straight Pass from the craps game that won it for him, and Travis McGee's Busted Flush is possibly a tip of the fedora to that even though McGee didn't wear one.

Anthony aka Tony's slightly less cool than Sinatra is in the movie. He gets rattled a little more, but the movie's fairly faithful to the novel's plot.

Rome is called on by an ex-partner to drive a missing heiress home from a seedy hotel where she's wound up at the end of a drinking binge. When he arrives at her dad's house, he's promptly hired by her businessman father, Rudy Kosterman, to find out what's troubling his daughter, his only heir from a first marriage.

By the time Tony makes it back to the Straight Pass, thugs are waiting, in search of a daisy-shaped diamond pin the daughter, Diana Pines, should have been wearing.

Tony's situation gets worse from there. That ex-partner's murdered soon after Tony asks about the missing pin, and he's off to figure out what's up as his efforts lead to word of a swindler named Nimmo and his henchman named Catleg.

From ruined-mansions to secret gambling dens and redneck shanty towns, Tony dodges bullets, outmaneuvers cops, including pal Lt. Santini, and encounters drug dealers. He finally figures out what's up with the pin and the Kosterman family as the tale winds down. It really all ties together in a tight package.

I need to look up the other Rome books including Lady in Cement, which was also adapted into a film about a year after Tony Rome. Albert moved on from Rome after three titles to craft a longer series about a hero named Pete Sawyer. show less

Perhaps the best entry in the series so far. Pete Sawyer is up against not just a cold-blooded but clever killer and thief, but a mysterious criminal gang as well. The climactic scenes in an abandoned WW2 fort are fantastic. This is simply one of the best private detective series ever, and it deserves a much much wider audience. Albert has created a great bunch of recurring characters, and they help Sawyer out here as he looks for the young woman who may hold the secret to the wherabouts of show more a huge stash of jewels. As always, the background is great, in this case Antwerp, Paris, Monaco, and the hills above the French Riviera. show less

The fourth entry in Marvin Albert's Stone Angel Series has one too many coincidences, but is otherwise another exceptionally well written, atmospheric story of private detective Pete Sawyer trying to solve the kidnapping of the wife of the very rich, influential owner of a transportation company. The owner hires Sawyer to find out if his own son and daughter, who resent their young stepmother, might have had something to do with it. Once Sawyer digs in, he finds things are a lot more show more complicated than that. Before he knows it, he's into a labyrinth that involves the CIA, the French secret service, criminal gangs, and terrorists.

Along the way, Albert gives us a fascinating tour of the area between Arles and Marseilles, as well as some of the back roads closer to Sawyer's home, which is near Monaco. Sawyer is one of the great characters in private eye fiction, with a well-drawn background, including an American father who parachuted into France during WW II and was rescued by the French Resistance, where he met Sawyer's mother. His father died before Sawyer was born, and his mother's life was saved by a man who later became a notorious mobster--but whose beautiful daughter is now a rising lawyer in Nice and Sawyer's sometime girlfriend.

In Albert's hands, none of this comes off as a collection of stock characters. He breathes life into every one, and combined with his ability to plot a complex mystery that only requires a little suspension of disbelief, it makes the Stone Angel books a series you must read. Whatever it takes--seek these books out. You won't regret it. show less