Randal S. Brandt, an occasional contributor to this blog in addition to his being a librarian at the University of California-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and an authority on the work of 20th-century author David Dodge, got right back to me with big news: In association with the April 1 reissuing of Dodge’s classic caper novel To Catch a Thief, an “official sequel” to that 1952 story will go on sale the same day, Mark ONeill’s To Catch a Spy. Both are coming from Poisoned Pen Press.
Bluffton, South Carolina, resident ONeill (no apostrophe) is described as a former toy designer, newspaper columnist, and private investigator. To Catch a Spy is his first novel. Here’s the plot synopsis:
It’s been a year since John Robie, notorious Riviera jewel thief, proved his innocence by catching a copycat burglar. And it’s been a year since John has seen Francie Stevens, the adventurous socialite who not only saw through his disguise, but helped him catch the copycat.I haven’t yet procured a copy of To Catch a Spy, but in his review of it for Goodreads, Brandt calls the yarn “extraordinarily well-written. All of the plot points hold together and bring new dimensions to John Robie and Francie Stevens that are believable and built on the foundations that David Dodge laid in To Catch a Thief in 1952.” He adds, though, that “It helps to read (or have read) Dodge’s book first …, but it is not strictly necessary. Just be aware that the characters are based on Dodge’s book, not on Cary Grant and Grace Kelly!”
Now Francie is returning to the Riviera for its first-ever Fashion Week as a model for a top French designer, and John plans on rekindling their romance. But there’s a problem. While helping a friend, John chases down a mysterious courier, whose ruthless associates now want John dead. To make matters worse, when Francie arrives, she has a boyfriend in tow, and tells John that she wants nothing to do with him.
John has to figure out why he’s a hunted man, and why Francie is acting suspiciously. Digging deeper, he discovers a spy ring with evil intent. As John works unofficially to gather evidence, a question begins to haunt him―could Francie Stevens be a spy? With his enemies closing in, John turns to his cat burglar skills to try to save his life and expose the traitors. To survive, he has to catch the spies before they catch―and kill―a retired thief!
ONeill is currently composing his second John Robie thriller.
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ONeill’s novel is just one of several crime-fiction curiosities I’m watching for in 2025. Another is Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business, which his due out from publisher Pantheon in late May and is described as “a brilliant graphic adaptation of the classic Raymond Chandler novella featuring detective Philip Marlowe.” Writing credit for said title belongs to Arvind Ethan David, with Ilias Kyriazis and Cris Peter responsible for the illustrations and coloring.The nitpicker in me wants to point out here that “Trouble Is My Business,” which initially appeared in the August 1939 edition of Dime Detective magazine, did not begin as a Marlowe outing. Chandler’s original “Trouble” protagonist was a Los Angeles gumshoe going by the name of John Dalmas, one of several similar loner P.I.s he employed in his early short stories. Later, after Marlowe became commercially popular, Chandler substituted his moniker for that of Dalmas. Reprints since have firmly established “Trouble” as a Marlowe story.
So what’s the criminal inquiry that David, Kyriazis, and Peter have adapted here? A summary reads as follows:
Los Angeles, 1930s. A rich old man who knows trouble when he sees it hires a detective agency to scare off a young woman who seems to be making his adopted son hemorrhage cash. Fortunately for the detective, a hard-drinking man named Philip Marlowe, trouble is his business.Not long ago, I received a PDF version of Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business. It’s a dark, moody, hardcover work of 128 pages, captivatingly rendered in both color and black-and-white illustrations, with a rewarding twist at the end. Even though it didn’t start out as a case for Philip Marlowe, I’ll certainly have to add a finished print version to my Chandler collection.
The young woman, Harriet, has an agenda all her own and aspirations beyond being a shill for a gambler. She's nobody’s fool. Nor is the old man, for his part. He’s got serious muscle—a chauffeur with a degree from Dartmouth, the only Black student from his class, who knows his way around a gun and isn’t afraid to use it.
Right in the middle of it all is a big pile of money. And when the bodies begin to drop, only Philip Marlowe can sort out which of these suspects is pulling the trigger.
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Finally, Randy Brandt informs me that Stark House Press will release a brand-new edition, in June, of Make with the Brains, Pierre, a 1946 tale of psychological suspense by one Dana Wilson … who would eventually go on to become the influential third wife of James Bond film producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli. Brandt explained in this Rap Sheet post from last year that Make with the Brains, Wilson’s only crime novel, “is narrated by Pierre Bernet, a French ‘film cutter’ who emigrated to Hollywood to escape the Nazi occupation of France and has been unable to secure work for several years. Finding himself in the middle of a romantic triangle—Pierre is desperately in love with Eleanor, an aspiring young actress, but Eleanor is in love with Joe, who also loves Eleanor but is married and refuses to seek a divorce—Pierre gets involved in a blackmail plot that leads to murder.”Not surprisingly, I have never read Wilson’s book (which was subsequently reissued as Uneasy Virtue and Scenario for Murder). But crime-fictionist Bill Pronzini has said it reminds him of Cornell Woolrich’s fiction “in its incisive examination of a man destroyed by love, hate, and the dark side of his own soul.” And that’s a recommendation that will ensure my picking up a copy when one becomes available.
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