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Say It Was Murder
McShan is tough and smart—a top operative for the detective agency Honeycutt Personal Services. But when he’s sent to the picturesque desert landscape of southeastern Arizona to check on the well-being of a former Olympic gymnast who’s become involved with a New Age cult, his hands are suddenly full.
It doesn’t take long for murder to rear its ugly head, and McShan finds himself neck-deep in a case involving vicious bikers, an unassuming barber who may be a criminal mastermind, a wealthy entrepreneur hiding dangerous secrets, and too many beautiful blondes with deadly secrets of their own.
Populated with compelling characters and told with a sharp, contemporary edge, this private eye classic will leave readers everywhere breathless.
It doesn’t take long for murder to rear its ugly head, and McShan finds himself neck-deep in a case involving vicious bikers, an unassuming barber who may be a criminal mastermind, a wealthy entrepreneur hiding dangerous secrets, and too many beautiful blondes with deadly secrets of their own.
Populated with compelling characters and told with a sharp, contemporary edge, this private eye classic will leave readers everywhere breathless.
- GenresMystery
166 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 5, 2018
15 people are currently reading
10 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Mertz
94 books33 followersPen name - Stephen Brett, Don Pendleton, Jack Buchanan, Jim Case, Cliff Banks.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 16, 2021
A tough guy PI is hired to check on a girl in a cult in Arizona. Checks all the usual boxes.
April 26, 2018
SAY IT WAS MURDER, by Stephen Mertz, is an innovative and modern vision of the old fashioned private eye novel. McShan—no first name offered—is an operative for a large detective agency. His boss requires daily status reports, gets grumpy when she doesn’t get those reports, and enforces a strict policy to include local law enforcement with any criminal activities uncovered during an investigation. McShan doesn’t wear a fedora and he works globally, rather than being centralized to a specific city or state. But beneath the new-world corporate trappings McShan is an old fashioned, authority shirking knight-errant with more loyalty to his clients than to the law or his employer.
A loyalty on full display when McShan is sent to Bisbee, a small rural city in deep southeastern Arizona, on what appears to be a simple case. Marna Richards, recently divorced from a tough guy film producer and all around jerk, wants McShan to make sure her daughter, Janine, is safe. Janine has been making time with a local commune-style cult and the relationship worries her mother. A simple case until it skews sideways and becomes something else.
SAY IT WAS MURDER is an example of what Stephen Mertz does so well. Take the ordinary—in this case a private eye investigating a cult—and make it original by shaking and twisting until it becomes new and interesting. McShan is likable and honorable. He’s tough enough to get things done and smart enough to keep himself out of trouble. The Arizona setting is painted with stark colors to reveal a vibrant rural landscape and culture. The prose is perfectly simple, its smooth as glass style has the strength of an Arizona thunderstorm. This is Stephen Mertz’s first private eye novel in four decades, and SAY IT WAS MURDER marks a fine return to a genre he never should have left.
A loyalty on full display when McShan is sent to Bisbee, a small rural city in deep southeastern Arizona, on what appears to be a simple case. Marna Richards, recently divorced from a tough guy film producer and all around jerk, wants McShan to make sure her daughter, Janine, is safe. Janine has been making time with a local commune-style cult and the relationship worries her mother. A simple case until it skews sideways and becomes something else.
SAY IT WAS MURDER is an example of what Stephen Mertz does so well. Take the ordinary—in this case a private eye investigating a cult—and make it original by shaking and twisting until it becomes new and interesting. McShan is likable and honorable. He’s tough enough to get things done and smart enough to keep himself out of trouble. The Arizona setting is painted with stark colors to reveal a vibrant rural landscape and culture. The prose is perfectly simple, its smooth as glass style has the strength of an Arizona thunderstorm. This is Stephen Mertz’s first private eye novel in four decades, and SAY IT WAS MURDER marks a fine return to a genre he never should have left.
May 24, 2018
Steve Mertz’s first book, way back in 1979, was a detective novel called SOME DIE HARD. Since then, over the course of his wild and woolly career, he’s pumped out more than, sixty more books, ranging from men’s adventure to military action, political thrillers, paranormal mystery, historical fiction, adult westerns, and even a vampire novel.
Surprisingly, what he has not written, as far as I can tell, is another detective novel. Until now.
SAY IT WAS MURDER is a return to Steve’s roots, and due to the tag-line “A McShan Thriller,” appears to be the first in a series. And that’s a good thing.
Good as SOME DIE HARD was (and still is – it was reissued by Rough Edges Press in 2014), Steve has come a long way since then, and SAY IT WAS MURDER puts all his skills on display. This novel is not only more hardboiled than the earlier book, it’s more thoughtful, it’s funnier, and the characters are more fully developed. More than anything, it reminds me of Ross Macdonald’s early (and best) Lew Archer books.
McShan, an “old school” detective in a smart phone age, is an unruly operative of Honeycutt Personal Services. He’s assigned to what his boss, the hawk-faced and hardboiled Agatha Honeycutt, calls “a misbehaving daughter job.” Much of the deftly handed humor is in the repartee between McShan and Agatha. He is unfailingly insubordinate, but gets away with it because he’s her best detective—and because she just plain likes him.
McShan himself is a shaggy-haired incarnation of the author himself, wearing boots, jeans, and a black t-shirt. And he’s operating on Steve Mertz’s home turf of Southern Arizona. The richly described territory is almost a character in itself. We visit the old cowboy town of Bisbee, with it’s historic Copper Queen Hotel, and his client is staying at The Tipi Lodge, where the rooms actually look like tipis. We also get the lowdown on rural bar crowds, the mystery of the Anasazi, the role of Walmart in rural society, and an appreciation of the temporary nature of civilization on the desert borderlands.
The cast includes characters who at first appear to be stereotypes of mystery fiction—the leader of a religious cult, the abused wife of a brutal jerk, the cop who works no harder than he has to, the mother who wants her girl back, and the misbehaving daughter herself, who doesn’t seem to give a damn. But as the story plays out, they are all revealed as more than they seem, and grow into real people.
For fans of Steve’s “action specialist” past, there’s a good taste of that, too, as McShan goes up against a behemoth biker babe who does her best to stomp him into oblivion.
Put it all together and you get a great read, and the hope of more McShan mysteries to come.
Surprisingly, what he has not written, as far as I can tell, is another detective novel. Until now.
SAY IT WAS MURDER is a return to Steve’s roots, and due to the tag-line “A McShan Thriller,” appears to be the first in a series. And that’s a good thing.
Good as SOME DIE HARD was (and still is – it was reissued by Rough Edges Press in 2014), Steve has come a long way since then, and SAY IT WAS MURDER puts all his skills on display. This novel is not only more hardboiled than the earlier book, it’s more thoughtful, it’s funnier, and the characters are more fully developed. More than anything, it reminds me of Ross Macdonald’s early (and best) Lew Archer books.
McShan, an “old school” detective in a smart phone age, is an unruly operative of Honeycutt Personal Services. He’s assigned to what his boss, the hawk-faced and hardboiled Agatha Honeycutt, calls “a misbehaving daughter job.” Much of the deftly handed humor is in the repartee between McShan and Agatha. He is unfailingly insubordinate, but gets away with it because he’s her best detective—and because she just plain likes him.
McShan himself is a shaggy-haired incarnation of the author himself, wearing boots, jeans, and a black t-shirt. And he’s operating on Steve Mertz’s home turf of Southern Arizona. The richly described territory is almost a character in itself. We visit the old cowboy town of Bisbee, with it’s historic Copper Queen Hotel, and his client is staying at The Tipi Lodge, where the rooms actually look like tipis. We also get the lowdown on rural bar crowds, the mystery of the Anasazi, the role of Walmart in rural society, and an appreciation of the temporary nature of civilization on the desert borderlands.
The cast includes characters who at first appear to be stereotypes of mystery fiction—the leader of a religious cult, the abused wife of a brutal jerk, the cop who works no harder than he has to, the mother who wants her girl back, and the misbehaving daughter herself, who doesn’t seem to give a damn. But as the story plays out, they are all revealed as more than they seem, and grow into real people.
For fans of Steve’s “action specialist” past, there’s a good taste of that, too, as McShan goes up against a behemoth biker babe who does her best to stomp him into oblivion.
Put it all together and you get a great read, and the hope of more McShan mysteries to come.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews