Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death

Mitch Tobin #1

by Tucker Coe (Pseudonym), Donald E. Westlake

Tobin, an ex-cop with a burden of guilt, is approached by a mobster to track down the person within his own organization who has murdered his girlfriend. Tucker Coe is the pen-name of mystery writer Donald Westlake.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, New York, Hard Boiled, Ebooks, Noir

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

A pseudonym used by Donald E. Westlake.

Series:
* Mitch Tobin

Reviews

[Charles van Buren · Rating 4 out of 5]

not one of Westlake's comic novels

I had trouble warming to the main character, a former police detective thrown off the force for good reason. He was an adulterer whose behavior led to gross dereliction of duty. However the story of his investigation of a mobster's disappeared and murdered girlfriend grew on me. A pretty good mystery which Westlake wrote under the pen name Tucker Coe.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death (Mitch Tobin, #1) by Tucker Coe (Donald E. Westlake.) Kindle

Mitch Tobin is working through his mixed feelings about being dropped from the police dept. after his partner is murdered in his absence. His way of working through these feelings of guilt and frustration is by building a wall around the back of his home. Mitch is a very real character and has his vulnerable side. His wife and son live together with him and apparently have weathered the storm of his firing.
Mitch is called upon to help solve the murder of a gangster's mistress. Step by step Mitch's thought process is measured out and explained.
I am thoroughly enjoying this series and this book brought me in to a closer relationship with Mitch.

[Lada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, to be transported to a time when people were named "Mitch" and "Rita", when you could size up a man in an instant, and a woman by the last time she'd had her hair done.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donald Westlake is a prolific writer. He wrote this series of NYC-based private eye novels under a different name (Tucker Coe). I've picked around on Westlake's novels but only recently heard of these. In the mood for a NYC tale, I figured I'd try it out and I'm glad I did. 

It's nothing more than a hardboiled mystery novel with its failed cop protagonist traipsing through New York trying to solve a murder (fortunately, he's not an alcoholic). But it's Westlake so that means it's one of competence. The characters are well rounded, the mystery finely textured and the conclusion was a pleasant surprise. In Westlake's large corpus of work, these books are pretty far down in terms of laudation but I enjoyed this immensely and will likely read the series. 

[Donald · Rating 1 out of 5]

“This is a great fairy story, but let’s see the footprints under the window.”

Well actually, this is NOT a great fairy story, but I sure loved that quote! The rest of the book, not so much. The main character is completely unlikeable, and the ending is completely predictable. Which is sad, as I am a big fan of Donald Westlake (a.k.a. Tucker Coe). I've read all 15 of the Dortmunder Books, and all 24 in the Parker series! But, I will not read another book in this particular series, no sir.

[Regan MacArthur · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seemed to me that Donald Westlake was tying himself into knots so he could justify writing a private eye novel to himself. I think his heart yearned with longing for the genre (he tried to find a way in several times over the course of his career) but his mind was too sophisticated to make a pass at a story that he knew Dashiell Hammett had already perfected. Westlake was too much of an artist to be satisfied playing copycat. So where does that leave us, the readers? With a terrific character study and a pretty lousy private eye novel. It's too damn slow. Fifty pages just to get started and then Westlake seems bored to death with writing the obligatory Q & A scenes and we get bored as a result. It's a shame. I was looking forward to this series.

[Denise M.]

AKA: Alan Marshall, Alan Marsh, James Blue, Ben Christopher, Edwin West, John B. Allan, Curt Clark, Tucker Coe, P.N. Castor, Timothy J. Culver, J. Morgan Cunningham, Samuel Holt, Judson Jack Carmichael, Richard Stark, Donald E. Westlake

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I commented this early Donald Westlake PI book. It's a worthwhile read if you track down a copy somewhere. Not as much humor as I'd expect from him, but definitely in the hardboiled arena.

[Lyle Boylen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first in the Mitch Tobin series of books by Donald Westlake. Another great story based in NYC, as a former cop does some sleuthing for the mob.

[Nigel Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a foreword to this one by Donald E Westlake explaining his choice of author name for this series and a little about how he wanted Mich Tobin to be an original investigator. It sounded promising.

And the first chapter is excellent. With little to do since being kicked off the force, Tobin is building a wall. As he digs the foundations, he sees how much his work resembles a grave and digs faster to change its size. There's something about building a wall for no clear reason that is fascinating (think Paul Auster's The Music Of Chance). His efforts are interrupted by a visit from a representative of a local gangster who would like to offer Tobin a job. Tobin isn't interested. I was hooked.

Then came chapter two. It's all back story and, as is often the case, was totally unecessary to me. The hook slipped from my mouth and I wriggled free.

I didn't really get caught again. It's only 200 pages long and I rattled through it at a fair rate, yet it was never very satisfying. The set up is overly complicated and Tobin's justification for working for the mob isn't strong enough for me. It's also difficult to see why such a powerful criminal organisation would turn to a washed up cop who's taken to digging walls.

There are plenty of characters to meet during a series of interviews and Tobin's faith in his abilities to judge a person from the merest glance is almost a super power. Some of these are engaging. Few of them lead us toward the killer Tobin is searching for.

A few exciting and unexpected incidents are thrown in to thicken the plot and help to shore things up, but it never really increases the temperature.

It's not terrible, but lacks the quips and darkness of lots of PI novels and never really grips. Perhaps the addition of some seriously compromising situations for Tobin might have helped. More than anything, this highlights the fact that detective fiction isn't easy to write.

So, Kinds Of Love, Kinds Of Death is the first in the series. Unless I stumble across a copy of a later addition in a charity shop or library, it'll be my last. It's biggest use to me, a reminder that it's about time I reread some early Paul Auster. The New York Trilogy would be perfectly apt.

[Guy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a Donald Westlake fan, but it’s been some time since I read one of his books. I don’t know about all the other readers out there, but when I return to an old favourite after a significant gap of time, I am reminded all over again why I like a particular author, and then I ask myself why it took me so long to return to a writer who is practically a ‘sure bet.’ Specifically, I’m talking about Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death which is the first entry in the Mitchell Tobin mystery series originally written by Westlake using the pseudonym Tucker Coe. Westlake, who died in 2008, was an extremely prolific author, and to be honest I’ve lost track of just how many names he used over his long varied career. I was delighted to come across another series character, and fans of Westlake will understand what I’m talking about when I say that readers of this author’s novels become die-hard fans of Westlake’s series characters.

The protagonist of Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death is a disgraced former New York police officer, Mitchell Tobin, fired from the force, and now unemployed. His wife, Kate works at a local five-and-dime and her meagre wages along with their diminishing savings keep the family afloat. Meanwhile, Tobin is using his energy to build a wall at his home. It’s back-breaking work, and there’s the sense that it’s both a physical punishment and a mindless distraction. Where did Tobin’s life go wrong? Now 39, he was a member of NYPD for 18 years before being kicked out. In his 14th year as a police officer, he met Linda, the wife of a burglar named Dink:

But the story tips itself right there, doesn’t it? On first seeing Linda’s name in print you know that I am destined to go to bed with her, knowledge that did not come to me until over a year later, when Dink had already been tried and convicted and was in the process of serving a term that at its shortest must last fifteen years. But it is impossible for me to communicate the knowledge to you as it came to me, in slow revelations, in tiny sunbursts of awareness, in gradual dependence and increasing need and a feeling that developed so slowly it was there long before either of us was fully aware of it, a feeling of inevitability. None of the rationalizing mist which so delightfully blinded me is available now to blind you; you must see it in a cold harsh light, a cheap and nasty bit of adultery with the most tasteless and degrading overtones.

I won’t spoil the story by giving any more details of what went wrong in Tobin’s life, but here he is, still with his wife, Kate and their only child, feeling a crippling sense of guilt. Tobin is busy working on the wall when he’s approached, through a lowly intermediary, about a job for gangster Ernie Rembek, an “amiable czar in a two hundred dollar suit.” It’s ostensibly a bit of detective work, but Tobin doesn’t have a PI license. Rembek who “needs somebody to do a cop-type job,” wants to employ Tobin for his detective skills and also there’s the unsavoury, unspoken idea that, since the case involves adultery, perhaps Tobin is the perfect man for the job. Tobin would like to tell Rembek to get lost, but Rembek makes an offer that Tobin is in no position to refuse. Tobin feels awkward working for a gangster, so he sets some hard and fast rules which lay the ground work for how he’ll treat his client and the case. Tobin may be a disgraced ex-cop, but he’s heavy on integrity:

Years ago I gave up being bitter about the comparative incomes of successful crooks and successful cops; it’s a cheap and irrelevant comparison anyway, since wealth is the goal of the crook but presumably something else is the goal of the cop.

Tobin is hired to find Rembek’s mistress, Rita Castle, a bit-part actress who’s flown the love-nest taking a large chunk of Rembek’s cash for her trouble. She’s left behind a cruel note to her ex-sugar daddy, but Rembek, still smitten, wants her back. Since there’s every reason to believe that she’s run off with someone Rembek knows (and that means another member of “The Corporation” ), whoever investigates needs to ask delicate questions and keep his mouth shut about the answers. That’s where Tobin comes in.

Mitch knows that he can never repair what happened in his past, and painfully honest about his errors and responsibilities, Mitch partly wants to be punished and remain in a state of disgrace. The job with Rembek offers some tantalizing possibilities that go far beyond the generous monetary compensation; the job is also a way to gain back some self-respect, and Tobin, who’s too hard on himself to allow for any self-pity or self-delusion, knows that he owes it to his family to do something about the mess his life has become.

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death is the first of 5 Mitch Tobin novels, and it’s an extremely strong start (could Westlake do anything less?). Westlake creates an incredibly strong and interesting protagonist, a troubled man immersed in his own tangled problems–a man who’s thrown a lifeline from an improbable and questionable source. Tobin, of course, takes the job, as we knew he would, and he proves to be an excellent detective. He learns that the men in “The Corporation” had “wifey time,” and this means public events they attended with their wives, but then there’s the rest of the time when the gangsters trooped out their expensive mistresses and partied. While Rita Castle acted like the “original dumb bunny” and seemed to be little more than a “feeble-minded” dumb blonde out for whatever cash from whichever besotted middle-aged admirer she could hook, Tobin begins to suspect that Rita Castle was not what she appeared. One look at the bookshelf next to her bed tells Tobin that Rita was anything but dumb. She was sharp and manipulative coming on to Rembek’s acquaintances, employees and business associates whenever Rembek’s back was turned. According to the chauffeur she was “dangerous,” and according to another gangster, Rembek couldn’t see what was obvious to everyone else:

When a man buys something new and shiny, and he loves it very much, you don’t tell him he got a lemon.

Anyway, I’m hooked, and I’m in for the series

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death

Murder Among Children

Wax Apple

A Jade in Aries

Don’t Lie to Me

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tight, punchy little crime novel. Disgraced ex-cop Mitch Tobin is hired by the mob (or, the corporation, as they prefer to call themselves here) to find the murderer of a mob boss's mistress. They don't want Tobin to do anything criminal, and he can even turn the killer over to the cops, they tell him, but the crime boss wants the killer caught and punished and figures an ex-cop has the best shot. Why? Because cops won't be able to ask the right questions or get the right answers, since the guilty party is almost certainly part of "the corporation," and too much dirt could get exposed by actual cops. Tobin can (and does) agree to keep confidential any knowledge of criminal enterprises he gleans while investigating. It's an interesting conceit, with plenty of the expected elements of crime novels, including unexpected twists. Some of these i did see coming, but not how or why they would be, and Westlake plays some nice games with muddying the waters. As usual with Westlake, the characters are distinctive if not deep, the plotting is taut, and the pages flow by. Crime fans should be satisfied. Still, it's not top-flight Westlake; I enjoyed it, but I doubt I will recall much about it down the road.

[Sidney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeming deceptively simple, this novel unfolds a masterful mystery as a defrocked cop is called on by "the corporation" for a murder investigation. While he'd rather build a wall around his back yard that symbolizes the reordering of his troubled life, Mitch Tobin begins to regain perspective as he delves into the world of a mobster's mistress, a wannabe actress killed after absconding with a suitcase full of cash and is killed in a corporation-linked hotel in Allentown. Tobin begins to interview men from her lover's sphere who knew her and have no alibi. Slowly amid explosions and other complications he wends his way toward the truth of who Rita Castle was and toward the answers about who wanted her dead. (A re-read after having read the Charter edition in the '80s.)

[Alecia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am/was a Donald Westlake fan (he wrote here under a pseudonym) and have read all of his Parker and Dortmunder novels as well as stand alones. I believe there are just four novels in this Mitch Tobin series, so of course I wanted to read the ones I could find.

They don't have the humor of the Dortmunder series, nor the intense, focused action of the Parker series. This character is an unhappy, somewhat depressed ex-cop, who in this first book, takes on a job from a rather avuncular mobster in order to make some money. Mitch is very above board in his terms with the mobster, and takes the job on reluctantly. Who killed the mobster's girlfriend? I guessed the answer but it was a pleasant enough read for me.

[David C Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The great Donald Westlake wrote so many books and series that he used several pseudonyms. This is a reissue of a series about a disgraced ex-cop that I hadn’t heard of. The ex cop, who is bitter and who’s family is becoming poor, is hired by a mobster on a straight job: find out who murdered his girlfriend, who had run off with someone and taken some of the mobster’s money. Westlake takes us on a tour of the NYC mob (called The Corporation) and there’s a charm to the mid 1960s throwback: expensive $200 suits! As a mystery, there’s a glaringly obvious suspect who goes unmentioned until the end. There’s The Family and then there’s family.

[Eli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I knew it was Westlake book when I read it as I did not find it under the original pseudonym Tucker Cole. In tone it is vintage Westlake but I loved the angle of the former disgraced police officer working for the mob. The mystery itself is solid stuff but it is the characters that I far and away most enjoyed. The way Westlake came up with a realistic way to have a disgraced detective who can be so morally ridged that it is hard for him to work for the mob is simply brilliant, as good a set up as I have ever read. I was thrilled to see there are more Mitch Tobin books. I look forward to spending more time with this character.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy going back to a “simpler” time and reading mysteries and detective stories from the 1950s and 1960s. Contemporary stories seem to be struggling to out do each other with complexity, multiple murders and serial killers, and psychological conundrums. Reading a master story teller, like Mr. Westlake, is a tonic; it clears the mind.

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death is a straight forward tale of an ex-cop solving a murder. All the pieces are revealed as the ex-cop discovers them. Well written and satisfying. I recommend this book.

[Jeffrey Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting Westlake variation

After reading the Dortmunder and Parker books, where cops are often less than admirable, I hadn't expected Westlake to make a cop the hero of a series. Of course, Tobin is an ex-cop, kicked off the force for a personal moral failure that had unexpected professional consequences. Perhaps this is what allows Westlake to express through Tobin some failings of the police, such as prejudice against the poor. Otherwise, as you would expect, the book has an interesting plot with believable characters. Highly recommended.

[Migrations · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first time reading a Donald Westlake novel. And I was really impressed by his ability to craft a really cohesive in tight story with lots of good action points in between. Something that kind of impressed me was that the main character actually had morals and tried to play things straight which was very different from other hard-boiled novels at the time.

Excited to read more in the series

[Nils Andersson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mitch Tobin, ex-cop, would rather dig in his back garden than deal with mysteries and mobsters, but the plot thickens as he finds himself entangled in a murder riddle. This is an early Donald Westlake (writing as Tucker Coe). It is tightly written and engaging, well up to his usual standard. You are unlikely to figure it out until the very end. Time well spent!

[D. Durst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crackerjack Westlake Mystery

Excellent Mitch Tobin mystery from Donald Westlake. I have read many Westlake stories, but this is one of his best. Tobin is an interesting character and I can’t wait to read more of his stories. Very methodical. Do yourself a favor and read Westlake today!

[David Bryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Must Be Early Donald

For many years Donald Westlake was my most favorite author. Dozens of books, hundreds of inspired characters. I had not known that this particular novel existed, but it was worth reading, even if it was not exactly at the top of his successes. Should I find anymore hidden gems I will devour them as easily as those in the past.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the Parker series. I really like some of Westlake’s one offs. I like the majority of Westlake’s Dortmunder series. This…. Not my jam. Hardnosed PI stuff. I may eventually read through the rest of the series, but if so, it will only be from a strong admiration for the author in general, and an even stronger lack of nothing else to read.

[Robert Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Westlake wrote five novels under the pseudonym of Tucker Cole featuring Mitch Tobin, the disgraced ex cop. Forced by circumstances to investigate a murder on behalf of a crime boss, he needs to tread carefully between the law and the criminal, trying to find out the solution to the mysterious death but staying out of danger from cops and gangsters.

[Trish Lawlor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disgraced ex-cop is asked to solve the murder of a mob boss’ girlfriend. Looks like an inside job which could mean fingering the mob boss’ close associate. But the police are interested in the case too which brings a load of problems for Mitch Tobin. I really enjoyed the twists and turns in this story, as well as following Mitch Tobin’s sleuthing technique. Great series starter. Already ordered book 2.

[William E. Ferreira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Westlake is in first place as an American mystery writer.

He's up there with the European greats and compares favorably with Martha Grimes, the other great American mystery writer. Fortunately he's many more books for me to read.

[Anne Patkau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like unusual premise: ex-cop struggling to regain mental health investigates for break from building wall to enclose back yard.

[Books-fly-to-me · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark police procedural so well written that I bought the entire series after reading the first page.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit, I wish I'd read this 5 years ago when I first bought it. Top shelf Westlake.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Murder Mystery

Characters and plot were well developed. Well thought out and an enjoyable read overall. Very much like an old noir mystery.