Contemporary Authors

• Gumshoe Oceanview Publishing (Longboat Key, FL), 2015
• Black Sun Avon Books (New York, NY), 1991
• Killing Suki Flood St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1991

1. Gumshoe : a Mortimer Angel novel LCCN 2016296823 Type of material Book Personal name Leininger, Robert, 1946- author. Main title Gumshoe : a Mortimer Angel novel / Rob Leininger. Published/Produced Longboat Key, Florida : Oceanview Publishing, [2015] Description 374 pages ; 24 cm ISBN 9781608091638 (cloth) 1608091635 (cloth) CALL NUMBER PS3562.E488 G86 2015 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. Black sun LCCN 91091797 Type of material Book Personal name Leininger, Robert, 1946- Main title Black sun / Robert Leininger. Published/Created New York : Avon Books, c1991. Description 309 p. ; 18 cm. ISBN 0380760126 (pbk.) 9780380760121 (pbk.) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 3. Killing Suki Flood LCCN 90048354 Type of material Book Personal name Leininger, Robert, 1946- Main title Killing Suki Flood / Robert Leininger. Edition 1st ed. Published/Created New York : St. Martin's Press, 1991. Description vii, 311 p. ; 22 cm. ISBN 031205453X : CALL NUMBER PS3562.E488 K5 1991 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Middlegame Strategy - 1997 Pickard & Son Pub,
• The Willow Creek War - 2010 America Star Books,
• January Cold Kill: A Gabrielle Johns novel (Volume 1) - 2014 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• Sunspot - 2014 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• Liar-In-Chief - 2014 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• The Tenderfoot - 2014 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• Richter Ten - 2014 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• Olongapo Liberty - 2014 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• Nicholas Phree and the Emerald of Bool - 2015 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• A Confederacy of Snakes - 2015 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• A Special Kind of Stupid - 2015 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• No Shortage of Weasels - 2015 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• Maxwell's Demon - 2015 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
• Gumshoe Rock - 2017 Createspace Independent Pub,
• Gumshoe for Two - 2017 Oceanview Publishing, Longboat Key, FL
• Gumshoe on the Loose - 2018 Oceanview Publishing, Longboat Key, FL

• Fantastic Fiction -

  Series
  Mortimer Angel
  1. Gumshoe (2014)
  2. Gumshoe for Two (2017)
  3. Gumshoe on the Loose (2017)
  4. Gumshoe Rock (2017)

  Gabrielle Johns
  1. January Cold Kill (2014)

  Novels
  Killing Suki Flood (1991)
  Black Sun (1991)
  The Willow Creek War (2010)
  Olongapo Liberty (2014)
  Richter Ten (2014)
  The Tenderfoot (2014)
  Liar-In-Chief (2014)
  Sunspot (2014)
  Maxwell's Demon (2015)
  A Special Kind of Stupid (2015)
  No Shortage of Weasels (2015)
  A Confederacy of Snakes (2015)
  Nicholas Phree and the Emerald of Bool (2015)

  Non fiction
  Middlegame Strategy (1997)

• Amazon -

  Rob Leininger graduated from Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek, California. He joined the U.S. Navy right out of high school and went to ETA school (Electronics Technician "A" school) on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, graduated at the head of his class, surprising everyone but mostly himself. Assigned to the heavy cruiser USS Saint Paul, CA-73, he sailed off the coast of Vietnam while the ship bombarded the coastal region with her 8-inch guns. A hot, humid, sweaty place. (See his novel, OLONGAPO LIBERTY). Five minutes after a shower you needed another shower. The ship's newspaper advertised for volunteers for Operation Deep Freeze, the navy's Antarctic operation. Well, sure. Can't be hot and sweaty there, so he volunteered in spite of the military axiom, "never volunteer for anything." He spent a year at the base at McMurdo, stood on the geographical South Pole (1967), put up an antenna on a roof when it was 77 below zero outside, then left Antarctica with three more years to go in the navy. Half a year in Christchurch, New Zealand, then two and a half years on the cruiser USS Oklahoma City, CLG-5, homeported in Yokosuka, Japan. More off-shore bombardment of Vietnam. He went from a lowly pollywog to a lofty Shellback near Singapore, then "crossed over" (the Equator) two more times. Left the navy in 1971. Got a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Reno, Nevada, with extra math classes. Became a member of Pi Mu Epsilon (national mathematics society), and Tau Beta Pi (engineering honor society). Worked on Trident missile design in Salt Lake City, then "black" projects for Northrop in California. Finally quit engineering to write novels. "Black Sun" was published by Avon Books in 1991. "Killing Suki Flood" was published that same year. "Suki" was optioned by Warner Bros. for a movie. He sold a screenplay to New Line Cinema a few years later which made him a member of the Writers Guild of America (East). Finances (a mortgage) forced him to seek "real" employment, so he became a high school math teacher, much loved by his students, especially when he talked about googols and googolplexes, gave fun chapter tests, and made them memorize the quadratic formula. After 12 years of that, he retired in order to write full time. Currently he lives in northern Montana with his wife, two golden retrievers, two lab mix mutts, and a psychotic cat. The skunk that got stuck in the dryer vent hose was a bonus, untaxed by the state (so far).

• The Big Thrill - http://www.thebigthrill.org/2018/04/gumshoe-on-the-loose-by-rob-leininger/

  Gumshoe on the Loose by Rob Leininger
  3 weeks ago by ITW

  0

  IRS agent-turned-PI Mortimer Angel is relaxing in a hole-in-the-wall bar in a Reno casino when an attractive young girl hires him to find out who left her a cryptic message demanding a million dollars. At the girl’s house, Mort finds the body of missing rapper Jonnie Xenon―Jo-X to his legions of fans―hanging from the rafters with two bullet holes in him. Mort is shocked when he learns the identity of the girl’s father―and even more shocked when the father hires him to investigate the murder.
  Mort, being Mort, accumulates a few felonies as he follows the clues to Las Vegas. And along the way, he picks up an alluring young assistant who changes his life―in every conceivable way.
  Author Rob Leininger took time out of his busy schedule to meet with The Big Thrill and discuss the third installment of the Mortimer Angel series, GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE:

  What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
  A few hours of pure enjoyment. The Mort Angel books are humorous and bawdy with more than a hint of real danger by the time the dust settles.
  How does this book make a contribution to the genre?
  The Mort Angel novels are . . . different. Mort isn’t yet a “real” private eye. He’s an ex-IRS agent in training with an actual private, but he’s the focus of the story. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but he gives it all he has, and then some. And he gets results. And national recognition.
  Was there anything new you discovered, or that surprised you, as you wrote this book?
  Yes. As Mort Angel says, “Girls flock to me like pigeons to a statue.” I find it surprising that this has never happened to me. Not sure why not.
  No spoilers, but what can you tell us about your book that we won’t find in the jacket copy or the PR material?
  Mort seems to find himself involved with more women than any man has a right to have in one lifetime. It appears that leaving the IRS was a good career move. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but a hell of a lot of fun.
  What authors or books have influenced your career as a writer, and why?
  First and foremost, as with other writers, John D. MacDonald, simply because he was a fantastic writer. Also, Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was in high school, the “Mars” books in particular. More recently: John Lescroart because the Dismas Hardy books are not only excellent, they are also a series. And John Sandford, who writes novels that are fun and really move.
  *****
  Rob Leininger joined the US Navy for seven years, spent one of those years at McMurdo base in Antarctica on Operation Deep Freeze, earned a mechanical engineering degree and spent five years working to keep the wings on airplanes. He gave that up to write novels, wrote Black Sun (Avon Books, 1991), and Killing Suki Flood (St. Martin’s Press, 1991). He taught high school math for thirteen years in Reno, Nevada, then retired to Montana with his wife and three golden retrievers to continue his writing career. GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE is the third novel in the Mortimer Angel series.
  To learn more about Rob, please visit his website.

• From Publisher -

  Award-winning and USA Today best-selling author Rob Leininger grew up in California before joining the Navy. He served aboard heavy cruisers during the Vietnam War and also at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. He received a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, and worked on Trident missiles for Hercules, and “black” defense projects for Northrop Corp. Gumshoe on the Loose is the third novel in the best-selling Mortimer Angel Gumshoe series. Before deciding to write full-time, Leininger taught high school math in Reno, Nevada. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi—engineering honor society and of Pi Mu Epsilon—National Mathematics Society. He now lives in Eureka, Montana.

  Author Website: http://www.robleininger.com/

• Jason Bovberg - http://www.jasonbovberg.com/rediscovering-robert-leininger/

  Rediscovering Robert Leininger
  by Jason Bovberg | Jul 10, 2015 | Journalism | 3 comments
  If you’re a crime-fiction aficionado of any taste and distinction, you recognize Robert Leininger’s Killing Suki Flood (St. Martin’s) as a work of singular voice and power. It flashed like heat-lightning back in 1991, enlivening the genre with its neo-noir assuredness, its laid-back sarcasm, its prurient and sultry charm, and the shocking sadism of its villains. Killing Suki Flood is a book that should have launched a lively publishing career.
  However, not long after the back-to-back publication of his sci-fi thriller Black Sun (Avon, 1991) and Suki, Leininger disappeared from the scene, leaving many fans (myself included) wondering what had happened to such a towering talent. The truth is, a dozen years after Suki made her skimpy-clothed debut in that blistering New Mexico desert, Leininger retreated from writing and began a career teaching high school math, which he would do for over a decade.
  Recently, after retiring from that career, Leininger has been edging back onto the publishing scene—primarily with the announcement of a new novel called Gumshoe, to be released by Oceanview Publishing in November. After tracking Leininger down (24 years after I read Suki!), I found that Gumshoe isn’t new at all; in fact, he wrote it in 1995 and until now it has remained unpublished, awaiting glory. He has recently updated it and revised it for the 21st century. Even better than that: Leininger has released at least a half-dozen other “lost,” never-before-published, and revised novels to Amazon, in both paperback and ebook formats, including the following:
  Tenderfoot (1983)—a western
  Maxwell’s Demon (1987)—a sprawling sci-fi thriller
  Olongapo Liberty (1988)—a Vietnam-era tale
  Sunspot (1991)—revised and updated (formerly Black Sun)
  Killing Suki Flood (1991)—revised and updated
  January Cold Kill (1992)—a female-detective novel
  Richter Ten (1995)—a sci-fi thriller
  During his decade-plus of teaching—which consumed all hours every day, leaving nearly no time for writing—Leininger did manage to come up with something all-new: a self-described “children’s novel written for adults,” Nicholas Phree and the Emerald of Bool, in 2005. All of these books are available on Amazon—a boon for long-time Leininger fans.
  It’s an exciting time for the author who brought Suki into the world. The impending publication of Gumshoe heralds the return of a unique talent. As we wait for the November release date, I took some time to interview Leininger about his career, his predilections, and his life.
  Was Tenderfoot the first novel you wrote? Interesting that your first was a western, and you don’t seem to have revisited the genre since. So I guess I’m interested in that book as your “first” and your experiences as a young writer. How did it all start for you?
  Tenderfoot was the first novel I ever finished. It was called The Willow Creek War for many years. (I liked the new title a lot more, so when I finally published it on Amazon CreateSpace, I changed the title.)
  I can’t say I was a “young” writer when I wrote it. I was 36 years old when I bought an IBM PC in 1982 (.064MB of RAM and two 5.25″ floppy disks—no one was selling hard drives back then), and I wrote Tenderfoot in about three months in the evenings and weekends while working as a mechanical engineer for Northrop, an aerospace/defense company near Thousand Oaks, outside Los Angeles. I’d had the idea for years, but I was in college cialis medicament achat and didn’t have the time. After I graduated, I bought the computer and dove in. The novel has changed very little since then. It has undergone minor editing, word and phrase changes, but the storyline never changed a bit. The afternoon I finished the last page, I was floating on air. Literally. I walked across the room without touching the floor. Maybe the first novel is like that, because none of them since has had the effect of weightlessness, gravity suspended.
  But it was a western and I wasn’t really interested in continuing in that genre.
  Did you try to sell The Willow Creek War in ‘83?
  Sort of. I didn’t know what to do with it after I wrote it, so I sent a cover letter to one agent or publisher (I don’t remember which) and was basically told that it was unlikely that the novel was any good and they didn’t want to see it. End of story, which might seem strange but at the time I didn’t know anything about marketing or persistence.
  I still love the story of Tenderfoot. The hero is a civil engineer who returns home to his father’s ranch and single-handedly defeats a much larger outfit by using his brains and . . . something else he learned back East. I won’t give that away. It’s still too wonderful.
  Your next book was Maxwell’s Demon, which looks as if it was quite the undertaking.
  That’s still the “biggest” novel I’ve ever written (193,000 words).
  A nearly 200,000-word book for your second effort! Did long-form writing come easy to you, in your early years?
  I’ve never really cared for short stories. If the story is good, I don’t want it to end, so I’ve never found short stories to be satisfying. Naturally, then, I prefer to write novels. I’ve even written three short stories myself and didn’t find that to be a particularly satisfying experience either, except for one in which a World War II destroyer mysteriously ends up on the main street of a small town in Idaho one morning. That one was a kick and a half. (Read that story, “White Elephant,” for free at Leininger’s website.)
  So, yes, the long-form came naturally and “easy” to me—easy being relative, since all novels are marathons or ultra-marathons. Therefore, easy isn’t right; I think the word is “satisfying.”
  What was it about the Maxwell’s Demon story that was compelling?
  If you search for “Maxwell’s Demon” on Google, you’ll find that it’s a concept first proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, then again in 1871 and 1872. It’s a way to defeat or circumvent the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
  What I found compelling about Maxwell’s Demon is: What might happen if someone (a young boy) had the power to affect the probabilistic motion of molecules, to create order out of chaos, and what might the US Government and the Russians do to get their hands on him?
  Did you get any interest from publishers?
  My agent at the time called it my “Million-Dollar Novel.” Eight or ten major publishing houses turned it down. At this point, it has fallen short of a million dollars by roughly a million dollars.
  The novel is part science fiction, part thriller, and part horror or supernatural. As such, publishers had no idea what to do with it. Actually, there are writers out there getting their multi-genre novels published, but I was still an unknown, so even with an agent, no one would touch it. It’s still my biggest and grandest novel, and I think it’s sold about ten Kindle copies in the past eight months, so it’s made me approximately 0.67 cents per hour. Yes, that’s right, about $0.0067 per hour. I’m hoping for more in the future.
  Maxwell’s Demon sounds like a ton of fun, quite intriguing, and definitely something that demands more attention than it’s gotten so far. I can sense that you had high hopes for it at the time. I’m sure it was frustrating when it failed to gain traction.
  The book has an interesting history. It was actually my very first writing effort. The writing was pretty awful. I was just starting out, just learning. And I made a crucial mistake: I kept going back and reading the first few chapters, over and over, trying to convince myself that it was good, that I was on the right track. I read it so many times that I got utterly bored with it; I lost all faith that anyone would find it interesting since I no longer found it interesting. I made it to about chapter 7 and had to give it up.
  At that point I wrote The Willow Creek War (now Tenderfoot), and this time I refused to go back and read what I’d written unless I’d forgotten a character’s name. That worked, and I wrote it quickly.
  I then wrote a long novel titled Descent, in which a twenty-year-old kid (intelligent but into shoplifting and drugs) is abruptly transported about 20,000 years into the past. He wakes up on a hillside, naked, in grass. It takes him quite a while to believe that he’s really in the past. The point of the story is this: How would a man (in 1983 when I wrote the novel) survive if he had today’s scientific knowledge but none of today’s infrastructure? Anyway, he ends up with two “wives,” fights a bear, and learns how to hunt, but it’s all a huge, incredible struggle. Very little “modern” knowledge is useable in the world 20,000 years in the past. Makes you appreciate what we’ve got, and the sweat and struggle of a thousand generations.
  Then I tackled Maxwell’s Demon again. And again, and again, and again, refining it, adding new stuff, deleting stuff, trying to get it right. This continued well after I’d written a number of other novels. I’ve probably extensively revised Maxwell’s Demon a dozen times and given it a minor scrubbing another dozen times. That book is also available on Amazon/Kindle, but it’s mostly just sitting there. Maybe it’s the word “demon” in the title.
  At this point, success was around the corner with Black Sun. Can you talk a little bit about that success, particularly in the wake of your “biggest and grandest novel” remaining “drawered”?
  I suppose Black Sun was a success since it was published by Avon Books, a “real” publisher. But it was published in paperback, a print run of 25,000, and although it appears to have done well (considering), Avon didn’t reprint it and it faded into oblivion. (I’ve since re-edited and revised it, and resurrected it as Sunspot. It’s about 6,000 words longer than the original—better, too. On Amazon CreateSpace it’s my number-two “bestseller,” currently selling about 20 to 25 ebooks per month. Hey, it’s better than getting poked in the eye with that proverbial sharp stick.)
  Still, the experience of getting Black Sun published—did it feel like the beginning of a career, or at least a new kind of success? Was there something special about that book for you (before it faded)?
  Black Sun is the novel that got me an agent (first draft begun on 7/5/87 and completed on 9/20/87). I also sent it to publishers and agents, and in May 1988 Avon Books expressed interest. So I told the lady who was thinking about becoming my agent that I had interest by Avon, so she soon became my agent and Avon became my publisher. My agent asked for a bigger advance, and that took nearly a year to get through Avon (!) but finally, in May of 1989, she got Avon to pay $7,500 instead of their first offer of $3,000. And, yes, it did feel like I might have a career starting up. From June ‘88 to October ‘88, I wrote Olongapo Liberty. I started writing Killing Suki Flood on 6/17/89 and finished the first draft on 8/16/89, and mailed the final version to my agent in November. Early March of 1990 my agent placed it with St. Martin’s Press, also for $7,500. So Black Sun was my fourth completed novel and Suki was my sixth. In fact, I first held the hardcover of Suki in my hands a month or so before the paperback of Black Sun due to Avon’s delays.
  So, Black Sun was special in that it got me an agent and made me think I had a career starting up. I floated on air for a month or two. But Avon didn’t promote the book in any way, so it faded into oblivion. By the way, when I sent it to my agent I called it Dark Side of the Sun. I still like that previous (working) title better than Black Sun. But it’s Sunspot now, and I like that even more.
  Olongapo Liberty sounds like a personal tale for you. Care to touch on the inspiration for that one and what it means to you?
  Olongapo is a personal tale in that I was there (from 1966 to 1971, with two years off to go to Antarctica—Operation Deep Freeze). I wouldn’t want to call it autobiographical, but some of it happened to me, a lot of it happened to sailors I knew, and I turned it into novel form by adding about 15 to 20 percent of pure fiction that “could have happened”—that fit the possibilities that Olongapo offered, which were many and varied.
  In particular, the infamous tattoo (you have to read the novel to know what that was) is real. And a Navy chief (E-7) really did urinate in the coffee overflow tray in the crew’s mess, as stated in the novel. The town of Olongapo was obviously the “inspiration” for the novel. What it means to me is about what it means to those ex-sailors and marines who have reviewed it on Amazon. It’s a trip down Memory Lane. Those reviews indicate that I “nailed” Olongapo and how it was. If anyone wants to know how liberty was for sailors in Olongapo during the Vietnam War, this is the book to read.
  Okay, now we’ve come to Killing Suki Flood. You’ve gotta tell me about the spark that led to Suki.
  Ah, the “Suki Spark.” I was driving through Oregon on I-5 with my wife (to be) and saw a person changing a tire on the side of the road with traffic blowing by at 70mph. Not a good place to do that. But, I thought, there are worse places. Like out in the desert, lost, especially if you don’t have a clue how to change a tire. Instantly, Suki was born. Not far down the interstate I saw the name “Limosin” printed in huge letters on the roof of a barn, and that became Frank’s name, the guy who comes along and saves Suki. But it also immediately occurred to me that he wasn’t going to change the tire for her; he was going to make her do it. Anyway, that was the spark. You never know when they’re about to hit.
  To me, Killing Suki Flood is close to a perfect neo-noir—vibrant characters, sly humor, evil antagonists, fun, twisty plot, a truly great dame. It had a huge effect on me. I’ve read it probably six or seven times. Once you were inspired to write it, did it flow quickly from you?
  It took just two months to write. I told myself right up front that I was “writing a rocket.” I didn’t really plot it, and every time I started to slow down I told myself I was over-thinking it, and to “see” what happens next, and to make it fast and interesting. Just go, go, go.
  Was interest immediate?
  When I gave it to my agent, here’s what she had to say (I wrote down her words and immortalized them in a journal): “Sensational, marvelous, perfectly crafted. All dialogue, all wonderful. A stunner of a book.” She said it ruined her week since she couldn’t stop reading it. Well, okay, all great words to a beginning novelist wondering if it was ever going to happen. So then I thought maybe I was about to have a career. Avon had stalled for nearly a year and wasn’t paying much. Excitement for Avon and Black Sun were already fading. So my agent’s words about Suki were a huge boost.
  And, in a way, Suki really came through. It created movie interest. Warner Bros. optioned it for two years, then let the option lapse. Suki was optioned again by an “independent party” in Los Angeles for two years, and that lapsed. Then Davis Films optioned it, and it’s been under option with them ever since, roughly twenty years, give or take a few. Movie options for Suki were ultimately worth about forty times more than what St. Martin’s Press paid in their advance. Forty times!
  Holy cow!
  Yeah, it might be worth a Holy Cow. Suki has been under option (with three different “places”) since 1991. All in all, it’s made something over $300,000, of which my agent got 15 percent and Uncle Sammy got around 20 percent, give or take. If it weren’t for Suki, I’d probably be back in Reno, still teaching math (to kids who loved me, true, especially when I made them memorize the quadratic formula and use it correctly).
  I was particularly taken by Killing Suki Flood’s…shall we say…friskiness. Suki is a hot little number—a fact not lost on lucky Frank. And yet she’s also not merely a damsel in distress. She’s opinionated and strong. Any thoughts about the women in your novels?
  Damsels in distress cannot be protagonists in my novels. I like to write about women who are strong yet sexy, opinionated yet mellow enough to be fun. Given reasonable arguments, they are flexible; they can abandon a position they previously held strongly in favor of new knowledge, explanations that make sense. People who have their minds made up and no amount of proof or reason will change their minds are, to me, people who don’t have brains—they have concrete between their ears. They are boring because they are predictable. People like that don’t end up as heroes or heroines in my novels, period.
  Regarding “friskiness,” I’m personally bored by novels that don’t contain an element of sexiness. Not sex, but sexiness. Mort says it best In Gumshoe: “Anticipation is sexy. It charges the air, and charged air is worth a lot all on its own. Slam-bam takes the edge off before there’s an edge worth taking off.”
  And how about those villains? Some of the most sadistic, evil characters I’ve come across, and extremely well drawn. What was it like, the experience of creating those two?
  Mink and Charlotte are certainly something else. But … where did they come from? From within me, out of my imagination. Every character created by an author (as opposed to an author putting a known person into their novel) is part of that author, or a product of the author’s imagination. I can imagine evil. We have had examples of evil in our lives, or at least in the news: Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy, Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin. Murderous people with no sign of a conscience.
  Creating Mink and Charlotte was simply a matter of digging down far enough to uncover them. So if you want to create a truly evil character, give them no sign of a conscience. That worked for Killing Suki Flood, but it’s not a prescription for all novels. Some villains have at least a little redeeming value. They are more complex, true. They’re even more “real.” But if you want to see someone die, and die horribly, then what could be better than a Mink or Charlotte who would laugh at you if you were dying horribly, or worse than horribly? Well, some people couldn’t go that far, even reading a novel. To them I say, don’t read Suki. Winnie the Pooh is still in print.
  I can see why you might never have considered further books involving Suki, but I was wondering if you ever did. Were you pressured to do so at the time?
  I have considered a sequel—bring her back from Rio, Frank too. No one has pressured me to do so, however. But Suki is a dream girl. She might be worth bringing back. Of course I’ve got dream girls all over the place, in Sunspot, Richter Ten, and more recently in Gumshoe, and in the sequel to Gumshoe that I’m writing now, a novel with the amazing (working) title of Gumshoe Two. Her name is Lucy, and she’s a little doll.
  Having had the pleasure of reading Gumshoe, I can see some parallels with Suki, particularly surrounding your protagonists. Mort and Frank are of a type, and the same could be said for Suki and the bevy of lovely opinionated women in Gumshoe.
  My ideal sexy protagonist girl/woman hasn’t changed. They can be 18 (in Suki) or 39-40 (as in Richter Ten). Gabbi in January Cold Kill is also like Suki (and like Kayla and Jeri in Gumshoe). She’s the protagonist, and there’s no real male lead in the story. It’s Gabbi’s story. And, yes, I wrote it in the first person, putting myself in the shoes (and body and soul) of a gorgeous 31-year-old woman. I’ve got range. And I’m secure in my maleness. If anyone doubts that, read Gumshoe, in which I happily and with great abandon display all the qualities of a true male chauvinistic pig.
  But they share a lot of the same characteristics: strong, sexy, shapely, intelligent, mentally tough, reasonable. They don’t take crap from anyone, but they don’t give it arbitrarily, either. They’re not silly. They’re not flighty. Other women in my novels can be any of those things, but not my heroines.
  And Mort? Yes, he’s sort of like Frank, but different. And Tyler in Sunspot is sort of like Frank, but different. And Lew in Maxwell’s Demon (in his sixties) is sort of like Frank, but different.
  Was Suki transformational for you? January Cold Kill came after, and then Gumshoe. Was there an element at this period of “finding your genre”? What do you love about the crime genre?
  I wouldn’t want to say Suki was transformational for me in any particular sense. To do so, it seems that I would have to have “transformed” from something to something else, and that didn’t happen. I am (now) who I was before I wrote Suki.
  I’m still “finding my genre.” By now, I think it’s clear that—to the detriment of book sales—I don’t have a genre. I’ve written mysteries, thrillers, a western, a novel about sailors going on liberty in the Philippines, a political thriller/fantasy, “science thrillers” (Richter Ten and Sunspot), a sprawling novel (Maxwell’s Demon) that encompasses thriller, spy novel, techno-thriller, science fiction, and horror. And, rounding out this circus, a novel (Nicholas Phree and the Emerald of Bool) that has genies, flying carpets, a talking mouse, and a boy and girl who must save the world.
  All that said, I don’t particularly love the crime genre. I do love its “range” of motion. You can do things you can’t do in a “melt-your-heart” dog story, not that I don’t like those (read “Follow My Leader” written in 1957 by James B. Garfield—a Children’s Book Club novel I read way back when). Sunspot isn’t a crime novel, but it has “bad guys” who certainly qualify as criminals. Richter Ten is the same. It has criminal evil, but it’s not a “crime” novel. I just like the freedom of having certain characters capable of doing about anything. Crime novels quality, but they’re not the only ones. I just write what I want to write.
  Can you talk a bit more about your two detective novels Gumshoe and January Cold Kill? I’m curious about this yin-yang duo: Gumshoe as the self-described “male-chauvinist detective novel” and January Cold Kill with the female perspective.
  Gumshoe was male-chauvinist fiction, and fun. January Cold Kill was female-chauvinistic fiction, and fun. I suppose I was yinning in one novel and yanging on the other. All kidding aside, I had stories to tell and I told ‘em. Like I said earlier, I never settled on a single genre. Within mysteries, I didn’t settle right away on the gender of the protagonist. But Gumshoe has sold to Oceanview Publishing, so I’m in the throes of Gumshoe Two (seriously, what’s not to love about that title?) and back to male chauvinism (and loving it since the girls have good-sized breasts and the weather is hot).
  As for male chauvinism, I make no apologies for Mort’s (and my own) love of beautiful women. January Cold Kill was just another novel. I had a story to tell. It has a few sexy women in it, but not as many as in Gumshoe. January Cold Kill’s protagonist, Gabbi, is the sexiest of them all. She used to be a showgirl (very often topless) in a big production in Reno’s biggest casino, the kind of huge production that involves as many as eighty topless women and perhaps twenty or thirty scantily-clad men. So she’s definitely “got the goods.” She’s not a “tease”—at all. She uses her looks (not sex!) to advantage as needed, often playing on the immediate interest of almost all men when they encounter a gorgeous woman. And, by the way, that’s real life. Mostly, Gabbi is fun. And she loves to “break and enter.”
  On to Richter Ten! Did a real-life event inspire this return to the science-thriller genre? What do you love about this novel?
  I had written Sunspot (as Black Sun) much earlier, but I’ve always liked good “disaster” novels. I just hated all the other “earthquake novels” out there in which there’s some character buildup, then the quake, then seventy percent of the novel is about people crawling out of wreckage. Boring. So I came up with a way for a huge earthquake to be predicted in advance. That way the story could be about characters who weren’t struggling through wreckage. And the quake toward the end of the novel is much bigger than anything the San Andreas could deliver. So . . . I love the fact that my characters aren’t picking their way out of the aftermath of a big quake. Oh, and the two love stories. I’m a sucker for that stuff.
  You wrote the majority of these books through the 1990s, and you also tried your hand at screenplays. What was that period like? This is about the time I was wondering what might follow Suki. Were there nibbles on your other stuff? Any “almosts” from Hollywood?
  After Suki, I did major rewrites for Maxwell’s Demon and Black Sun in 1990. In January 1991, I wrote a screenplay in 14 days that sold to New Line Cinema. I thought I was a screenwriter at that point. But New Line Cinema did what the film industry does best: They trashed it, then didn’t like the result, so they dropped it. But it was $27,500 for 14 days work, so I shouldn’t complain. I wrote other screenplays, one of which made it to the top 10 in a competition that had more than 3,000 entries. But I never made another dime from screenwriting. I don’t bother with screenwriting any more. It was an interesting and frustrating time. I believe those people have no idea what they’re doing. Sometimes they get lucky, but that’s just part of the second law of thermodynamics.
  Another “almost” from Hollywood was my novel Richter Ten. A “movie person” said it would make a terrific movie, and they would move forward with that if it were published in hardcover. A publisher said they would publish it if it were made into a movie. No one could connect those dots, however. I believe there was a total of two dots, but I guess the geometry of drawing a straight line between them was too much like rocket science, so all that complexity is currently spiraling into the black hole at the center of the galaxy.
  Did your interest in screenplays stem from the options on Suki?
  Yes it did. My agent sent me four screenplays as examples. I read them, then said to myself, “That’s easy. I can do that.” So I wrote The Lemonmobile, New Line Cinema bought it (see above) then trashed it (see above), then dropped it (see above), but it paid the mortgage for a while (see above).
  So, after writing all these novels and screenplays, you began teaching in 2001. I’m interested to hear about your years teaching. Do you look back on the years with great fondness? Or were you frustrated by the lack of time for writing? Both? What were those years like for you?
  I liked teaching the students who really wanted to learn. Too bad there weren’t many of those, especially in the lower grades: first-year algebra and geometry. The biggest problem was administration, guided by the misguidedness emanating out of Washington D.C. like a noxious vapor—fools who went through high school and then thought they were experts in teaching high school when they didn’t have a clue, not a whisper of a clue, not an ephemeral ghost of a whisper of a clue. One of the things that made me want to leave teaching were those poisonous mandates by idiots that made teaching more and more difficult as time went on.
  So, fondness? Not really. Teaching started out taking about 80 hours a week, creating new lesson plans that made sense to me, not the trivial nonsense that was “recommended.” By the time I left teaching I had it down to about 65 hours a week. Those years were simply exhausting, that’s what I remember the most. By the end of a school year I was actually unsteady on my feet, sometimes staggering a little, I was so tired.
  The lack of time for writing was a factor, of course. All I managed to write in those 12-plus years was Nicholas Phree and the Emerald of Bool during one summer break.
  Nicholas Phree definitely stands out in your bibliography. You wrote it in the midst of your teaching career, so do you consider it, in some way, a distillation of your years working with children?
  This is just another example of me not settling down to a single genre. I had a story to tell so I told it. A genie with narcolepsy? Check. A flying carpet who was hit by a flaming arrow during the Battle of Hastings in the year 1066 and now has dreams so vivid he sometimes smolders and catches on fire? Check. Not one of the kids I taught math had a genie or a flying carpet. Oh, I picked up some “kid talk” during my teaching days, but Nicholas Phree certainly wasn’t a distillation of any of that. Magic gave me free rein to have fun of the wildest sort. Check out what the genie (Gene) and the carpet (Jules) and Nick and Hannah do in Area 51. I’m surprised I don’t have black helicopters flying over my house right now.
  I call it a “children’s novel written for adults.” If a person likes adventure and humor, there’s no way not to love this one. The adult humor isn’t XXX humor, it’s just references that kids won’t get. In fact, the people who will get the most out of Nicholas Phree are those forty and above. Eighty is by no means too old. This novel takes a certain amount of life experience to really understand all that’s going on. Hence: A children’s story written for adults.
  I can’t remember if you told me why you used a pseudonym…
  The pseudonym was because this was so different from any of my other novels. I didn’t want to confuse my readers. Turns out that worked. Nicholas Phree is buried so deep within Amazon it currently has sales of about two copies a year . . .
  You mentioned you’re working on Gumshoe Two now, and I think series are a great idea these days. What might come after?
  Mmmmm . . . how about Gumshoe Three? Man, that’s a title that sings, doesn’t it? Seriously, the protagonist, Mortimer (Mort) Angel runs around with gorgeous, sexy women. It’s fun to write that stuff. The best thing is, I get to hang out with Mort, watching him run around with gorgeous sexy women. And they sometimes take off their clothes.
  And on that note, thanks for your time, Rob! I’m very happy to see the resurrection of your writing career! Check out Rob at his website and on Amazon.com, and be sure to watch for the November release of Gumshoe from Oceanview Publishing.

• Robert Leininger Website - https://www.robleininger.com/

  Rob Leininger graduated from Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek, California, with a grade point average of about 1.9. Then, suddenly, he grew up. Joined the U.S. Navy right out of high school and went to ETA school (Electronics Technician "A" school) on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Graduated at the head of his class, surprising everyone, but mostly himself. Assigned to the heavy cruiser USS Saint Paul, CA-73, where he sailed off the coast of Vietnam while the ship bombarded the coastal region with her 8-inch guns. Hot, sweaty place. Five minutes after a shower you feel like you need another shower. The ship's newspaper advertised for volunteers for Operation Deep Freeze, the navy's Antarctic operation. Well, sure. Can't be hot and sweaty there. So he volunteered in spite of the military axiom, "never volunteer for anything." He spent a year at the base at McMurdo, stood on the geographical South Pole (1967), put up an antenna on a roof when it was 77 below zero outside, then came home with three more years to go in the navy. Assigned to the cruiser USS Oklahoma City, CLG-5, homeported in Yokosuka, Japan. More off-shore bombardment of Vietnam, went from lowly pollywog to lofty Shellback near Singapore, then "crossed over" (the Equator) two more times. Left the navy in 1971. Got a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Reno, Nevada, with a grade point average of 3.99 (what a difference it makes to "tune in" and do the work), with extra math classes. Member of Pi Mu Epsilon (national mathematics society), and Tau Beta Pi (engineering honor society). Worked on Trident missile design in Salt Lake City, then "black" projects for Northrop in California. He quit engineering to write novels. "Black Sun" was published by Avon Books in 1991. "Killing Suki Flood" was published that same year. "Suki" was optioned by Warner Bros. for a movie. Sold a screenplay to New Line Cinema a few years later which made him a member of the Writers Guild of America (East). Finances (a mortgage) forced him to seek "real" employment, so he became a high school math teacher, much loved by his students, especially when he talked about googols and googolplexes, gave chapter tests, and made them memorize the quadratic formula. After 12 years of that, he retired in order to write full time. GUMSHOE, published by Oceanview Publishing, was nominated for a Shamus Award for "Best Private Eye novel of 2015" by the Private Eye Writers of America, and made the USA Today bestseller list. A sequel, GUMSHOE FOR TWO, will be published by Oceanview Publishing on April 5, 2017. A third novel in the series, GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE, is nearing completion. Rob currently lives in northern Montana with his wife, two golden retrievers, two lab mix mutts, and a psychotic cat. The skunk that got stuck in the dryer vent hose was a bonus, untaxed by the state (so far).

  How did you get started writing?
  "Steve" in the fourth grade wrote a short story that the teacher read to the class. I thought it was terrific, amazing. At that point, I wanted to write too. Steve and I became good friends. In the fifth and sixth grades we "nerds" walked the playground during recess, talking about writing, trying to come up with other ways to say "said." During that time I wrote a "novel" by hand (of course) 87 pages long. Ever the critic, I realized it was awful and burned it. Now I wish I hadn't. Too late. (I no longer burn my novels; I rewrite them until I believe in them,)

  You write in many genres --- thrillers, mysteries, fantasy, western, US Navy. What's that all about?
  I bore easily. Seriously, I do. I have so many interests (math, science, fun, mystery, adventure, bad guys, good guys, love stories) that one genre doesn't give me enough "room" to write. I probably got that by reading many different kinds of novels as a young adult (voraciously), and all the different careers I've had have had a big impact. One "career," the Navy, gave me Olongapo Liberty. Olongapo was a liberty port in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. The place was so exotic, wild, and dangerous that I had to write about what I saw and experienced there. Call that one a "true" novel. I am also an electronic technician (U.S. Navy), a mechanical engineer, a high school math teacher, and a writer (including a screenwriter). Engineering: Many of my thrillers use math and science. Try Sunspot or Richter Ten if you want science, math, and adventure, with love stores in them. My novel, Maxwell's Demon uses a concept by the same name (see Maxwell's Demon in Wikipedia) as a basis for a rip-roaring thriller.

  But . . . fantasy? How does that fit in?
  Nicholas Phree and the Emerald of Bool is the funniest book I've ever written. How could I pass on that? I call it a "children's novel written for adults." Kids starting about age nine or ten will get the adventure, but only adults will get the "adult" humor, such as a twenty-dollar bill being turned into a thirty-six-dollar bill due to inflation, with Bill Clinton's face on it. A Bill on a bill. And the flying carpet, Jules, has a top speed of just over Mach 1.6, so he's no slouch (he's one of the main characters in the novel). Adult humor: He was scorched during the Battle of Hastings in the year 1066 when he was "young and impressionable"; his dreams of that battle are so real that he wakes up smoldering and needs to be doused with water. Oh, and the genie has narcolepsy. Even the trolls are funny (and stupid). Adult humor? You decide.

  You've written more thrillers than in other genres.
  I'm basically a thriller writer. My fantasy, "The Emerald of Bool," is a thriller for young adults with references that in fact make it a novel adults will enjoy more than kids, particularly adults who haven't lost that core of "child" in them. The Tenderfoot is a western "thriller." Maxwell's Demon is a huge thriller---science, math, submarines, CIA, FBI, Russian commandos, a huge manhunt as "clandestine services" try to track down and capture a 13-year-old boy who is thought to be the most dangerous person on the planet. Richter Ten and Sunspot are "science thrillers," both containing love stories. I don't write love stories, but many of my novels have love stories embedded in them. I'm a romantic at heart. It's likely I got that from reading the "Mars books" by Edgar Rice Burroughs---the ongoing love story between John Carter and Dejah Thoris was terrific (and of course frustrating). The love stories in my novels are fun and not nearly as frustrating, but ERB started writing the Mars books in 1911, years before Pluto was discovered, so I'll give him a pass. Novels tended to be "tame" back then.

  You've signed a contract with Oceanview Publishing. Care to comment on that?
  Yes. It didn't take the folks at Oceanview long to recognize the potential of my novel, GUMSHOE. It was published in November of 2015. Gumshoe is a "Mort Angel" mystery. It's "humor with a bite." Mort is funny, self-deprecating, serious, complex---a former IRS-agent turned "gumshoe," and, as he says (thinking Mike Hammer), "Girls are going to flock to me like pigeons to a statue." He has no idea what he's doing, but he's learning, doing the best he can. Along the way, girls do flock to him, much to his surprise, and he finds himself involved in some very nasty cases. GUMSHOE was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Novel (in 2015) by the Private Eye Writers of America, and it made the USA Today bestseller list. My thanks to Pat and Bob Gussin and the rest of the team at Oceanview for seeing what others could not. The second novel in the series is GUMSHOE FOR TWO, published on April 5, 2017 and a finalist in the 2017 "Best Book Awards" in the "Mystery/Suspense" category. The third novel in the series is GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE, with a publication date of April 3, 2018. I'm currently working on the fourth novel in the series, GUMSHOE ROCK.

  I have to ask about your novel January Cold Kill. Are you really Gabrielle Johns?
  Yes, I am. In fact, I am every one of my characters, although when I look in the mirror I don't see a 29-year-old gorgeous woman, and I consider that to be a good thing, as does my wife. I wrote January Cold Kill as a challenge, putting myself in the mind (and body?) of a beautiful woman, divorced, who was, years ago, a showgirl who danced topless with a hundred other girls in big "Hollywood-style" productions in one of Reno's biggest casinos. Now "Gabbi" makes a living as a backroom poker player, but she trained as a PI with her ex-father-in-law after the divorce, and old friends and family members still come to her, needing investigative help. Gabbi is sexy, funny, and serious---just what I would be if I were a gorgeous female 29 years old with the ability to bluff at poker and pick locks. All I am in real life is funny; I reserve serious for April 15th and trips to the DMV. Oh, and I'm up for jury duty this year, if they call. That'll be serious too, unless, of course, it's two old guys fighting over a ham sandwich in which case they're both guilty.

  Tell me about Killing Suki Flood.
  A thriller. "Suki" was published in hardcover by St. Martin's Press. It was then optioned by Warner Bros. for a movie. That fell through, then Suki was optioned by a "third party" in Southern California. That option ran out, so Suki (obvious a girl with legs) was optioned by Davis Films, and is still under option by them. A movie might be made some day. Killing Suki Flood has been published in England, France, and the Netherlands. Suki Flood is a beautiful 18-year-old girl being hunted down by a seriously evil bad guy. She finds an unlikely protector in Frank Limosin, age 54, a former truck driver who is on the run from the police. This is a story that really takes off and goes.

  What's next?
  A third Gumshoe novel, GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE, will be published on April 3, 2018. And I'm nearing completion on a fourth Gumshoe novel: GUMSHOE ROCK.
  The Mort Angel "saga" continues, as bawdy and deadly as ever!

  Can we continue this discussion later?
  Of course. Looking forward to it.

Leininger, Robert: GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE

Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Leininger, Robert GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE Oceanview (Adult Fiction) $26.95 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-60809-274-1
After leaving the IRS, a Reno private eye-in-training lands a high-profile case, loses it, lands it again, and finally puts it, and several other parties, to bed.
Maude "Ma" Clary, who runs Clary Investigations, aims to keep a tight leash on Mortimer Angel while he's working for her. As if. When dazzling Danya Fuller, encountering Mort at a bar, recognizes him from his high-mortality last case (Gumshoe for Two, 2017) and asks him to phone her the next morning, Mort ignores Ma's warnings about her, and before he can say "my bad," he's discovered the body of missing rapper Jonnie Xenon, aka Jo-X, hanged and shot in the garage of the place Danya shares with Shanna Hayes. Danya runs from Mort as if he had a social disease, but he soon has an unlikely new client: his old frenemy Detective Russell Fairchild, of the Reno Police Department, who turns out to be Danya's father. A badly spelled note demanding $1 million from Danya and Shanna as the price for hauling away Jo-X's corpse indicates further complications. But Mort's adventures don't kick into high gear until Lucy K. Landry, an underage small-town waitress who claims to be 31, latches onto him, begging him to take her on as his assistant, and leads him into a fevered Las Vegas fantasy of topless car rides, high-stakes roulette, and wild living in a comped suite. Mort's determination to avoid his scolding boss and his cheerfully sexist obsession with tight-bodied females, all of whom seem to find him irresistible, consistently upstage the question of who killed Jo-X, though fans may be surprised at just how casual and disappointing the mystery is.
A high-spirited pipe dream of nonstop wisecracks, female pulchritude, and physical combat most likely to appeal to readers who still miss the men's magazines of the 1950s.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Leininger, Robert: GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461294/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a5f50ccd. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461294

Killing Suki Flood

Sybil Steinberg
Publishers Weekly. 237.51 (Dec. 21, 1990): p46.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1990 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
KILLING SUKI FLOOD
Robert Leininger. St. Martin's/Dunne, ISBN 0-312-05453-X Middle-aged truck driver Frank Limosin is on the lam from California police and maybe the FBI when he meets beautiful 18-year-old Suki Flood in this often diverting, but not-quite-believable first novel. Having sold the load of ball bearings he was supposed to deliver for $77,000, Frank heads for the New Mexico desert to hide out and plan his next move. With misgivings, he picks up Suki, whose car has broken down, and learns that she's on the run too, from a sadistic con-man boyfriend named Mink who has sent a few of his thugs after her. After being beaten up by the henchmen, who take Suki to Reno, Frank hitches from the desert to an airport, rents a plane and rescues Suki, who wants revenge. She and Frank start to gather evidence of Mink's financial misdealings, but are recaptured by Mink, who plans to torture them both to death. The grisly climax is followed by a facile, cop-out denoument. Leininger's crisp, snappy dialogue outshines his predictable plotting and inconsistent characterization.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Steinberg, Sybil. "Killing Suki Flood." Publishers Weekly, 21 Dec. 1990, p. 46. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A9283222/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=55b7e7cd. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A9283222

Gumshoe on the Loose

Don Crinklaw
Booklist. 114.13 (Mar. 1, 2018): p26.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Gumshoe on the Loose. By Rob Leininger. Apr. 2018.384p. Oceanview, $26.95 (9781608092741); e-book (9781608092758).
Mort Angel, ex-IRS agent and PI-in-training, is asked by a friend's daughter to look into strange goings-on on her property. What he finds is the body of gangsta rapper Jo-X, whom Mort speaks of as "an opportunistic, foulmouthed piece of shinola." Still, he can't turn down a commission from his friend to find the rapper's killer. For the first 96 pages, we're in standard hard-boiled land, with a bloodsucking reporter, a sarcastic cop, and an exasperated PI boss, all told in a postmodern, serious-but-not-really style. But then, speaking of postmodern, we--and Mort--meet Lucy, a type becoming a fixture in modern crime novels. She's smart, she's funny, she's good-looking, she's 31 but looks like a teenybopper; and so delightful are their scenes together that we're sorry the two have to get to work. They hunt the rapper's killer, uncover a date-rape scheme, and accidentally stumble on a pair of mass-murderers, all in a high-speed, easy-reading narrative that ultimately answers our most important question: Will Lucy be back in the sequel?--Don Crinklaw
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Crinklaw, Don. "Gumshoe on the Loose." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2018, p. 26. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532250845/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=be82d37c. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A532250845

Gumshoe on the Loose: A Mortimer Angel Novel

Publishers Weekly. 265.7 (Feb. 12, 2018): p59.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Gumshoe on the Loose: A Mortimer Angel Novel
Rob Leininger. Oceanview, $26.95 (384p)
ISBN 978-1-60809-274-1
Leininger burlesques the gumshoe subgenre in his uneven third outing for 42-year-old Reno, Nev., Pi-in-training Mort Angel (after 2017's Gumshoe for Two). Mort is flattered when a beautiful woman, who identifies herself only as Danya, approaches him in a bar and says she's looking for a maverick PI. She leaves before she can explain what she wants of him, but promises to be in touch. The next day, Danya phones and asks Mort to check out an intruder at her house. There Mort finds journalist snoop Vincent Ignacio from the scandal sheet Celebrity News sneaking around. Ignacio admits to stalking Shanna Hayes, yet another beautiful woman, who's married to Danya. Complications arise after Mort discovers the body of missing rapper Jonnie "Jo-X" Xenon hanging in Danya and Shanna's garage, and Danya turns out to be the daughter of his Reno police nemesis, Russell Fairchild, Leininger's mix of humor and the hard-boiled will strike some readers as awkward. Still, Mickey Spillane fans who can make do with a cut-rate version of Mike Hammer may be satisfied. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Gumshoe on the Loose: A Mortimer Angel Novel." Publishers Weekly, 12 Feb. 2018, p. 59. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528615488/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=538fe7ac. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A528615488

Leininger, Rob. Gumshoe

Edward Goldberg
Library Journal. 140.15 (Sept. 15, 2015): p72.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
LAST-MINUTE MYSTERY
Leininger, Rob. Gumshoe. Oceanview. Nov. 2015. 384p. ISBN 9781608091638. $27.95; ebk. ISBN 9781608091539. M
When IRS agent Mortimer Angel decides to switch careers and become a private investigator, he envisions himself a modern-day Sam Spade spouting smart repartee, meeting gorgeous girls, taking in plenty of action, and solving murders. But, aside from the gorgeous girls he's met, including one mysterious woman who breaks into his house, appropriates his bed, and leaves him notes, the only thing Angel finds in his first two days on the job are severed heads; three of them to be exact. Two belong to the mayor and district attorney of Reno; the third happens to be his nephew and new boss, Gregory. Realizing that his inexperience as a gumshoe is a major drawback in solving the murders, Angel hires experienced PI Jeri DiFrazzia, who is herself gorgeous, to help. VERDICT The tone of Angel and DiFrazzia's repartee recalls Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles of the "Thin Man" series. Angel's cavalier but determined attitude is offset by DiFrazzia's all-business demeanor, making them a likable and effective team. The somewhat implausible ending does not diminish the reading enjoyment. Should Angel and DiFrazzia morph into a series, mystery readers will be well served.--Edward Goldberg, Syosset P.L., NY
Goldberg, Edward
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Goldberg, Edward. "Leininger, Rob. Gumshoe." Library Journal, 15 Sept. 2015, p. 72. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A429499531/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=01e982b5. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A429499531

Gumshoe

Paul T. Vogel
MBR Bookwatch. (Dec. 2015):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Gumshoe
Rob Leininger
Oceanview Publishing
595 Bay Isles Road, 120-G, Longboat Key, FL 34228
www.oceanviewpub.com
9781608091638, $27.95, 368pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: For nine long days, the mayor and district attorney of Reno, Nevada, have been missing. Vanished without a trace. Their vehicles were found parked side-by-side at Reno-Tahoe International Airport. Did they fly somewhere together? They aren't on any flight manifest. Did the two of them take off with a big pile of the city's money? If so, the city accountants can't find it. Were they murdered? There's no sign of foul play. Their disappearances have finally made national news. Enter Mortimer Angel, who'd just quit a thankless job as an IRS agent. Mort is Reno's newest gumshoe, a private-eye-in-training at his nephew's detective agency. Just four hours into his new career, Mort finds the mayor (make that, the mayor's head) in the trunk of Mort's ex-wife's Mercedes. The news-hungry media speculates: Did Mort kill the mayor? Did Mort's ex? As events begin to spin out of control, Mort realizes things have been out of control since the night before he started his new career, the night he found the unknown naked blonde in his bed.
Critique: A terrific and non-stop entertaining read, "Gumshoe" is a deftly crafted, fast-paced mystery novel of the first order and documents author Rob Leininger as a novelist of truly exceptional storytelling talent. A "must" for all hardcore private eye fans, "Gumeshoe" is very highly recommended and certain to be an enduringly popular addition to community library Mystery/Suspense collections. For personal reading lists it should be noted that "Gumshoe" is also available in a Kindle edition ($9.99).
Vogel, Paul T.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Vogel, Paul T. "Gumshoe." MBR Bookwatch, Dec. 2015. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A439034921/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=05d386d6. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A439034921

Gumshoe

Don Crinklaw
Booklist. 112.5 (Nov. 1, 2015): p30.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Gumshoe. By Rob Leininger. Nov. 2015. 384p. Oceanview, $27.95 (9781608091638).
For the first third of this novel, readers are likely to wonder, along with hero Mort Angel, just what they're getting into. Mort is a former IRS agent seeking to reinvent himself as a PI. He and his author push all the buttons. He's solitary, he drinks too much, he banters with hookers. Is this a parody? An homage? A clumsy attempt to have it both ways? Hard to tell, even when Leininger has Mort, just like Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, come home to find a gorgeous naked woman in his bed. Then Mort is asked to solve a couple of grisly murders; he pairs with a female PI, who is also a judo champ, and the mood darkens beautifully. She teaches him how to be a real detective, not the storybook version, by making him sit in a library and read dull documents until his eyes burn. They're drawn into a story of madness, incest, and revenge that ends in a stunning set piece that roars for nearly 40 pages. A fine, thrilling read.--Don Crinklaw
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Crinklaw, Don. "Gumshoe." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2015, p. 30. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A434514416/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=610d36df. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A434514416

Gumshoe: A Mortimer Angel Novel

Publishers Weekly. 262.36 (Sept. 7, 2015): p45.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Gumshoe: A Mortimer Angel Novel
Rob Leininger. Oceanview (Midpoint, dist.),
$27.95 (384p) ISBN 978-1-60809-163-8

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
At the start of this complex, seductive thriller from Leininger (Killing Suki Flood), Mort Angel has quit a dead-end job as an IRS agent and is about to embark on a new career as a PI trainee in Reno, Nev. Meanwhile, Mort's ex-wife has been heating the sheets with Reno's mayor, but the mayor has mysteriously disappeared along with the city's DA, and Angel's first assignment is to hunt down the two missing politicians. What looks like a straightforward hard-boiled tale takes one surprising turn after another, propelled by Mort's snappy narrative voice and wry observations. While Mort's astonishing success in the romance department is more than slightly farfetched, Leininger keeps the action rolling fast enough to keep any willing reader turning the pages. Eventually, Mort unravels a family history that would make Ross Macdonald proud. There's no violence and very little gore for most of the novel, but after a long and complicated buildup, the climax arrives with screaming intensity. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Gumshoe: A Mortimer Angel Novel." Publishers Weekly, 7 Sept. 2015, p. 45. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A428752507/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cfa59ae2. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A428752507

Gumshoe for Two: A Mortimer Angel Novel

Publishers Weekly. 264.6 (Feb. 6, 2017): p49+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Gumshoe for Two: A Mortimer Angel Novel
Rob Leininger. Oceanview (Midpoint, dist.),
$26.95 (368p) ISBN 978-1-60809-232-1
Early in Leininger's fast-paced, action-packed second novel to feature PI-in-training Mortimer Angel (after 2015's Gumshoe), the wisecracking Mort, who's temporarily alone while his boss/fiancee Jeri DiFrazzia is away, meets beautiful Holiday Breeze, whom he assumes is a hooker, in a Reno, Nev., bar. It turns out that Holiday is actually Sarah Dellario, a University of Nevada civil engineering student. She's searching for her younger sister, Allison, who worked as a prostitute and has gone missing. Mort agrees to help her find Allison. The sexual tension between the two is palpable--especially because of Sarah's penchant for taking off her clothes and parading naked in front of Mort. But this tension, coupled with the relentless sexual objectification of Sarah, gets old quickly and overshadows the plot, which also involves Mort receiving a package containing a severed hand. When the brutally unexpected conclusion comes, it's jarring and tonally incompatible with what started out as a relatively lighthearted story. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Gumshoe for Two: A Mortimer Angel Novel." Publishers Weekly, 6 Feb. 2017, p. 49+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A480593844/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=181124fc. Accessed 18 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A480593844

"Leininger, Robert: GUMSHOE ON THE LOOSE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461294/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a5f50ccd. Accessed 18 May 2018. Steinberg, Sybil. "Killing Suki Flood." Publishers Weekly, 21 Dec. 1990, p. 46. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A9283222/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=55b7e7cd. Accessed 18 May 2018. Crinklaw, Don. "Gumshoe on the Loose." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2018, p. 26. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532250845/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=be82d37c. Accessed 18 May 2018. "Gumshoe on the Loose: A Mortimer Angel Novel." Publishers Weekly, 12 Feb. 2018, p. 59. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528615488/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=538fe7ac. Accessed 18 May 2018. Goldberg, Edward. "Leininger, Rob. Gumshoe." Library Journal, 15 Sept. 2015, p. 72. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A429499531/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=01e982b5. Accessed 18 May 2018. Vogel, Paul T. "Gumshoe." MBR Bookwatch, Dec. 2015. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A439034921/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=05d386d6. Accessed 18 May 2018. Crinklaw, Don. "Gumshoe." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2015, p. 30. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A434514416/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=610d36df. Accessed 18 May 2018. "Gumshoe: A Mortimer Angel Novel." Publishers Weekly, 7 Sept. 2015, p. 45. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A428752507/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cfa59ae2. Accessed 18 May 2018. "Gumshoe for Two: A Mortimer Angel Novel." Publishers Weekly, 6 Feb. 2017, p. 49+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A480593844/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=181124fc. Accessed 18 May 2018.

• Bookreporter
  https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/gumshoe-on-the-loose
  Word count: 507

  Gumshoe on the Loose
  by Rob Leininger

  Following GUMSHOE FOR TWO, “Mort Angel, gumshoe extraordinaire and media darling, was about to get another round of national exposure on prime-time news.” He’s “back in the thick of it,” when seductress Danya lures the maverick investigator to discern who has been prowling around her house.
  Danya is “[b]eautiful, busty, slinky, trouble.” She’s also the black lovechild of Reno PD detective Russell Fairchild, who’s “as ugly and white as Buddy Hackett’s ghost.” Yeah, that cop who wants to bust Mort’s chops. Or, stated more licentiously, two other body parts my Bookreporter editor won’t let me specify. Danya is married to Shanna Hayes, who “had a figure that would stop traffic.” Celeb Shanna is also the focus of Vince Ignacio, an aggressive hack for Celebrity News, who skulks around Shanna’s house trying to find a connection to Jo-X.
  "Anyone searching for a bawdy go-to gumshoe tale need look no further than Rob Leininger’s Mortimer Angel series."
  Jonnie Xenon (Jo-X, pronounced Jo-Z, whose “rapper lyrics which were as toxic as a cloud of powdered plutonium”) is “six-five, 164 pounds, looked like a two-by-four with limbs, and [had] a mouth so foul Clorox wouldn’t get the stench out.” Vince finds that connection hanging around the garage. And the stench is not from Jo-X’s mouth.
  “Maude Clary was a battle-axe,” now Mort’s boss. “Ma” is bound for Memphis by train, and won’t have an en-route cell phone connection. She instructs Mort not to do anything without calling her first. What could possibly go wrong?
  Mort encounters Lucy K. (which morphs easily to “Lucky”) Landry in a Nevada dive-in diner serving fried chicken and fries, “The Heart Buster Special.” After a witty and ribald exchange, Lucy --- who appears to be post-pubescent jailbait but is confirmed 11 years younger than Mort’s 42 --- and he are on the road to Las Vegas, where Lucy proves, indeed, to be lucky. After a few thousand-dollar chip losses at roulette, Lucky Luce bets it all on double zero and defies the maxim that the house always wins. The madcap couple gets a deluxe Luxor suite comped, and the winnings pile up.
  But Mort is paid to track down Jo-X’s killer, locate the now-missing Dayna, and keep Detective Fairchild out of the spotlight. Jo-X’s mansion is near Vegas, but police have combed through it finding no leads. With Mort and a busty bombshell tooling around in a Mustang convertible looking for a killer, it’s not Vegas-style gambling to bet that things get dicey. Especially when bad luck turns out to be good fortune, in a convoluted way.
  Anyone searching for a bawdy go-to gumshoe tale need look no further than Rob Leininger’s Mortimer Angel series. If you’re unfamiliar with these laugh-riot Gumshoe installments, get a character crash course by reading 2015’s GUMSHOE debut.
  Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy on April 6, 2018

• Bookreporter
  https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/gumshoe-for-two
  Word count: 417

  Gumshoe for Two
  by Rob Leininger

  The Great Gumshoe is back! Novice private investigator Mortimer Angel --- a former “wallet wringer” for the IRS, “our nation’s Gestapo” --- returns with Jeri DiFrazzia, who is now Mort’s boss and fiancée.
  Hooker Holiday Breeze again thickens the mix, but Ms. Breeze is actually Nevada university engineering student Sarah Dellario, who has an IQ higher than Reno’s hottest summer day. Sarah/Holiday is in hooker guise searching for her missing younger sibling, Allie, who indeed worked as a prostitute. As stated in the original GUMSHOE, “You don’t gloss over that kind of weirdness.”
  "A brutally shocking dénouement left me breathless and made me long for a lightning rod."
  With Jeri’s blessing, Sarah (“A vamp, but not a vampire”) and Mort become a pair of gumshoes searching for Sarah’s sister --- and share a bed in a small-town Nevada hotel. Disembodied heads don’t find their way to Mort, but you have to hand it to Super Sleuth. Literally. Via FedEx, someone sends Senator Harry Reinhart’s unattached hand: “When a presidential candidate’s shaking hand turns up without the candidate, it makes for a real fine story.”
  Affairs get complicated, and Jeri calls in her PI mentor, Maude “Ma” Clary: “Ma was the Big Gun. In the first minute I had her pegged as a .44 Magnum.” Ma is from the old school of private investigators, and immediately commands respect and admiration, a literary keeper sure to appear in future installments.
  The plot shifts from finding Sarah’s sister to locating Senator Reinhart’s remaining body parts, especially since he couldn’t keep one of them in his pants: “Thoughts about this search for Allie were getting bulldozed off a cliff.” But Mort and Sarah --- while sharing a bed sans pajamas --- deduce that both cases are somehow related. Moreover, the objectification of Sarah grows as old as Methuselah (Genesis 5:27).
  A brutally shocking dénouement left me breathless and made me long for a lightning rod. Did I read the last few chapters of another novel? The incongruous conclusion to Rob Leininger’s second installment of this otherwise lighthearted series caused me to question if Mortimer Angel has finally matured. Say it isn’t so!
  Despite the plot peripeteia, this is a bawdily entertaining series, making Mortimer Angel my favorite go-to gumshoe.
  Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy on April 7, 2017

• Bookreporter
  https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/gumshoe
  Word count: 554

  Gumshoe
  by Rob Leininger

  Following JANUARY COLD KILL, Rob Leininger introduces unwitting private investigator Mort Angel, who looks down the road to middle age in the rearview mirror: “I was 41 going on 18.” Not only is he stuck with the moniker Mortimer, in the midst of a mid-life crisis he quits his uninspiring job as an IRS agent, “a wallet wringer for Uncle Sam.” Yawn! Mort has visions of Sam Spade and buxom blondes, when he becomes a novice at his nephew’s lackluster PI firm in Reno, Nevada.
  Meanwhile, Reno’s mayor and city attorney have gone missing, their cars parked at the airport. What nefarious hanky-panky is going on in Nevada’s other Sin City? A few hours into his new career, Mort stumbles onto a mystery that could be a cozy, were it not for the mayor’s head found in Mort’s ex-wife Dallas’ Mercedes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the missing attorney’s decapitated head appears on the ex’s foyer table. Compounding the enigma is the revelation that Dallas had her own hanky-panky going on with the late mayor, who will never again be late for a council meeting. “You don’t gloss over that kind of weirdness.”
  "Chuckling through this seductive laugh riot, I realized that I had absorbed something good, sort of like a toddler eating broccoli disguised as ice cream."
  Media goons and police --- should that be media and police goons? --- hound Mort and Dallas, “RPD’s two prime suspects.” Did one off Mayor Sjorgen trying to frame the other? After all, TV detective lure suggests that the ex is almost always the guilty party in a whodunit. Moreover, Sjorgen was “the kind of guy who couldn’t pass a mirror without giving it a wink and a loving smile.”
  Mort realizes, “I’m not the swiftest pigeon in the flock, and as a private eye I might have trouble finding my hand in my pocket.” He does what few men are willing to do: hire a professional. In this case, the pro PI won’t touch Mort’s case with the proverbial pole-vaulter’s pole. However, the pro PI does refer him to clientless upstart PI Jerry DiFrazzia, only Jerry is spelled Jeri, short for Geraldine. “Pound for pound, she was a bobcat and I was an out-of-shape moose.”
  The weirdness that Mort can’t gloss over becomes as eldritch as Key West Fantasy Fest. Jeri --- for whom Mort now works, seeing as how his employer-cum-nephew is Reno’s latest headless horseman --- digs into Sjorgen’s past and unearths unsavory characteristics.
  Chuckling through this seductive laugh riot, I realized that I had absorbed something good, sort of like a toddler eating broccoli disguised as ice cream. Humor makes the intense parts palatable, the way Whoopi Goldberg’s character, Oda Mae Brown, provided comic relief in the 1990 film Ghost. The author even imparts philosophy, in his own ice-cream-flavored broccoli way: “Insanity is its own incomprehensible carnival, but it’s probably not a good idea to ask the psychos questions.”
  In one of the most bawdily entertaining novels I’ve enjoyed in years, Mortimer Angel is now my favorite go-to gumshoe.
  Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy on November 13, 2015

• Kirkus Reviews
  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-leininger/killing-suki-flood/
  Word count: 263

  KILLING SUKI FLOOD
  By Robert Leininger
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  KIRKUS REVIEW
  Boy meets girl, boy loves girl, girl gets kidnapped by hoods, boy rescues girl from torture, boy and girl get recaptured and tortured some more, boy and girl escape and kill hoods and run to Brazil. Okay, there are a few complications, and they make the first-half of this debut novel unusually friendly and likable. The boy, trucker Frank Limosin, is three times as old as the girl, who is illiterate, well-endowed Suki Flood; both are on the lam--Frank has $77,000 stashed in his van as Ms take from a ball-bearings heist; Suki has run out on bunco artist Simon Voorhees (Mink) with $311,000--and their May-December idyll on a Nevada mountaintop boxed in by wonderfully inept hired guns Mote and Jersey is buoyant and affecting. But once Suki falls back into the clutches of sadistic Mink and his equally depraved stepmother Charlotte, the reading audience shrinks to those few inquiring minds who want to know exactly how long Chinese water torture takes to make you break, and who wonder how anybody--like the villains here--could be evil enough to try it. By the final curtain, you don't even care what happens to Frank and Suki, as long as they get off that anthill. The same old film noir moves, with tenderness lightening the first half and sadism dragging down the second.
  ISBN: 312-05453-X
  Publisher: St. Martin's
  Review Posted Online: May 20th, 2010

• New York Journal of Books
  https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/gumshoe-loose
  Word count: 926

  Gumshoe on the Loose

  Author(s):
  Rob Leininger
  Release Date:
  April 3, 2018
  Publisher/Imprint:
  Oceanview Publishing
  Pages:
  384

  Buy on Amazon

  Reviewed by:
  Toni V. Sweeney
  “a combination Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer with a generous dash of Maxwell Smart.”
  Once again, the PI-in-training hero of Gumshoe and Gumshoe for Two is fighting crime his way. Mort Angel (and he’s quick to explain it isn’t “Mortimer” which is a birth certificate error) is hot on the trail of a murderer.
  Still recovering from his last case and the death of his fiancée, Mort is relaxing in the Green Room of Nevada’s Golden Goose Casino, listening to the latest news: Celebrity rapper Jo-X has disappeared. Immediately, he’s distracted when he’s approached by a young woman wanting to hire him.
  “‘My dad doesn’t like you. He says you’re a maverick and unprofessional. But I think that’s what I need.’
  A maverick. I liked that. And unprofessional, so I was two for two.”
  She doesn’t give her dad’s name. Just her own. Danya. She tells Mort to call her in the morning. Mort’s on his own for a bit, with his boss, Ma Clary, out of town, so what’s to stop him from taking a case?
  Nothing. Especially if there’s a pretty girl involved, which Danya definitely is, but there generally are pretty girls in Mort’s cases. As he says, “Now that I’m a gumshoe, I attract them like white cat fur on a black wool suit.”
  The phone call the next day isn’t what he expects, however. Danya says someone’s snooping around her house, and she doesn’t want to call the police. Mort admits that’s fishy but who is he to argue because “fishy is a big part of my growing repertoire as a PI.”
  When Mort arrives, Danya’s gone and the house is empty, except for one person in the bedroom. “She was a vision; tanned, lean, strawberry blonde, and she had a kitchen knife in one hand with a gleaming eight-inch blade.”
  The young lady is Shanna, Danya’s wife, who’s as close-mouthed but sharp-tongued as Danya is. A surprise is awaiting Mort in their garage, however.
  “Rapper Jo-X, hanging against the wall with a rope around the rafters.”
  From that point on, things go from worse to whatever the next step after worse is.
  Discovers abound. Danya is the daughter of Reno Detective Russell Fairchild, Mort’s bête noir, who forces himself to overcome his prejudices and hire the PI to take his daughter’s case. For reasons not immediately available, Shanna, disguised as a mysterious woman named Celine, has been dating Jo-X, and may have been with him in his desert hideaway before he was killed. In Jo-X’s pocket is a receipt for a motel room in Caliente, and a flash drive marked Celine. An investigative reporter called The Wharf Rat has been following Shanna.
  Ma Clary, Mort’s boss, has ordered him not to get into trouble while she’s out of town, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do a preliminary investigation.
  Does it?
  Soon Mort’s heading to Las Vegas. Along the way, he acquires a sidekick who plans to make the association permanent. Lucy looks 17, is 31 (it’s been verified) and can give as good as she takes in the smart-mouth department. She’s also beautiful, diversely talented, and will turn out to be the best partner Mort could ask for, in more ways than one.
  With a stay at a desert inn that could give the Bates Motel a few pointers, and a confrontation with a mother and son murder team, a disguised Mort and Lucy soon find themselves up to their necks in a mystery of another kind involving the deceased Jo-X and culminating in a shoot-out in the desert to end all shoot-outs.
  As the title implies, Mort Angel is a loose cannon of a gumshoe, and the narrative is by turns wild, irreverent, dangerous, and deadly. Showing the definite influence of many of the crime noir detectives of yesteryear, Mort himself comes off as a combination Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer with a generous dash of Maxwell Smart.
  Under Mort’s narration, the story is told with tough-guy wit and humor. The banter between Mort and Lucy may remind older readers of the Thin Man dialogues of Nick and Nora Charles, with its pithy pronouncements and double entendres. Comparisons aside, this PI-in-training is one funny dude who is also very well-equipped to do what has to be done in the detecting department, and he ain’t so bad with the ladies, either.
  Gumshoe on the Loose is an easy read. The narrative acts as a lure, tempting us to follow the clues, creating a desire to continue reading. Once this novel is picked up, the reader will be reluctant to put it down, not only wanting to discover whodunit, but also because of that snappy dialogue. Mort does have a talent for a turn of phrase.
  Bring on the next adventure, Mr. Leininger. We’ll be waiting!

  Toni V. Sweeney is the author of The Adventures of Sinbad and The Kan Ingan Archives series and also writes under the pseudonym Icy Snow Blackstone.

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