Bay City Blues & No Crime in the Mountains

Almost as vivid as the character of Philip Marlowe or in this case, John Dalmas, the seedy and glitzy outreach communities of Los Angeles in the late thirties emerge with their own distinct identities in this pair of stories. The hues of "Bay City Blues" include a bar that is "dark and vaguely purple, like a half-remembered nightmare," and the fog that comes in off the ocean is metaphorical, too - a corrupt police department that hovers over a gambling syndicate like a protective shroud. Investigating the alleged suicide of a doctor's wife, Dalmas characteristically ignores the fact that his client dies before their first meeting. Similarly principled, John Evans in "No Crime in the Mountains" proceeds with an investigation despite the fact that his client, who had sent a retainer with his request for a meeting, turns up at the appointed place dead. "I had a hundred dollars to earn, after all." With a deceased gambler for a client, Evans should probably take it to heart when the consta