The Second Longest Night

Chester Drum #1

by Stephen Marlowe

To find his ex-wife’s killer, Drum takes on the Communist PartyDeirdre Hartsell loved life too much to shoot herself in her pretty head. She’d been a high-society party girl since her days at college, and her two greatest passions were keeping up appearances and having a roaring good time. Women like that don’t kill themselves, and Deirdre’s father wants to prove that his girl didn’t die by her own hand. To get the truth, he hires Washington DC’s sharpest private detective, Chester Drum. After all, Drum knew Deirdre better than anyone—he was married to her. But in a town built on lies, Deirdre lived with more than her fair share of secrets, and the first thing Drum learns is that his late ex-wife was a prominent member of the Communist Party, supporting the local cell with endless donations from her fat checkbook. Did leftist sympathies get Deirdre killed? The truth lies in Venezuela—and Chester Drum has gone farther than that for answers before.

238 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Aka Milton S. Lesser, Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, Jason Ridgway, C.H. Thames.

Stephen Marlowe (1928–2008) was the author of more than fifty novels, including nearly two dozen featuring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum. Born Milton Lesser, Marlowe was raised in Brooklyn and attended the College of William and Mary. After several years writing science fiction under his given name, he legally adopted his pen name, and began focusing on Chester Drum, the Washington-based detective who first appeared in The Second Longest Night (1955).

Although a private detective akin to Raymond Chandler’s characters, Drum was distinguished by his jet-setting lifestyle, which carried him to various exotic locales from Mecca to South America. These espionage-tinged stories won Marlowe acclaim, and he produced more than one a year before ending the series in 1968. After spending the 1970s writing suspense novels like The Summit (1970) and The Cawthorn Journals (1975), Marlowe turned to scholarly historical fiction. He lived much of his life abroad, in Switzerland, Spain, and France, and died in Virginia in 2008.

Marlowe received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1997.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Second Longest Night" was the first of twenty Chester Drum mystery/adventures, one of the greatest tough guy series ever written. Although towards the beginning of this book Drum talks about reading Mike Hammer novels as a nod to the great Mickey Spillane, tough guy Drum is no carbon copy.

Based in Washington D.C., ex-FBI agent Drum runs a small private investigator's office and his cases often stumble over international affairs, diplomats, and Cold War politics. He is also a globe-trotting PI whose adventures seem to take him all over the world, sometimes, although not here, as a CIA proxy.

This is a fast-moving, action-packed story involving his ex-wife's apparent suicide, senators, congressmen, nosy blonde reporters, irresistible vixens, South American diplomats, astronomers, oil barons, and the Red Scare.

It is one terrific hard-edged story that is hard to put down and a great start to the series. Marlowe doesn't try to be overly pulpy. His writing is not filled with too many clever memorable phrases. He just tells a good story and tells it pretty straight.

This is a highly recommended book.

[Cassio Queiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me quote John Conquest, author of a precious reference book ("Trouble is Their Business"):
"Combining exotic locales with no-stop action, (Stephen) Marlowe produced hardboiled international detectitve stories that won considerable critical respect, (Anthony) Boucher remarking on his acute storytelling and taut undestatement of sex and violence."
This is the first Chester Drum mystery and a very good one.
Don't miss it.

[cool breeze · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a mediocre soft-boiled detective novel. You can anticipate what the twist is going to be from early in the book.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was written during the height of the Communist witch hunts and since P.I. Chester drum works out of D.C., it was a matural subject.

Drum is hired by his ex-father-in-law, Senator Hartsell, to investigate the death of his daughter Deidre, Drum's ex. It had been a short marriage lasting only three months. She thought his friends to rough, he thought hers to snooty. An apparent suicide, father thought different.

Drum gets involved with Commies(apparently Deidre had been a party member), a junior senator that had had an affair with her about the same time as the marriage and spillback was threatening his political career, a Venezualan Commie and his oil holdings, a young reporter named Marianne Wilder, all tied in to the father.

There was also Deidre twin sister married to an astronomer(another disappointment for father).

The trail takes him into South American, then back to California.

Interesting as always.

[Britt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

I wasn't sure what to expect with this story. I'm intrigued now. Chet Drum is one of those characters who definitely fits the genre of hard boiled 1930-1950s detective stories. Interesting to see how it all played out.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Milton Lesser, who wrote Sci-Fi under his real name, wrote PI hard-boiled pulps under Marlowe. The first Drum case with sparse writing, hard-boiled but didn't totally beat my drum. 3.5 stars.

[Francis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm old, my dad was even older. He was a Mess Hall Sargent. Like a lot of Mess Hall Sargents, his appreciation for reading and photography came about mostly by reading literary magazines like Stag and Male. I'm guessing my dad would have really liked this guy.

Only problem is, dad and I didn't always see things eye to eye.

That's all I'm gonna say.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: to find his ex-wife's killer, Washington DC PI Chester Drum takes on the Communist Party.