One O'Clock Jump

Dorie Lennox Mysteries #1

by Lise McClendon

Halfway around the world, war has begun, but for Dorie Lennox, a newly-minted private eye on her first tail, danger is more immediate. The dark streets of Kansas City of 1939 offer swing music, fast cars, gangsters, and the chance to forget about the Depression and her own murky past. Dorie is thrown into a quickly unraveling scam that offers salvation to few - and misery to plenty. With vivid prose and sharp dialogue, the world of Dorie Lennox comes alive, behind the wheel of her Packard, into the packinghouses, race tracks, and mansions of jazz-age Kansas City. The landscape of America and the homefront of World War II are evoked in a thoughtful mystery that lingers for the force of characters and keen sharpness of a slice of history seen through the perceptive, compassionate eyes of Dorie Lennox.

Genres: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Cozy, Historical Mystery, Mystery Thriller

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 16, 2001

About the author

Lise McClendon is a fiction writer living in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. She has been a film reviewer, a film maker, a journalism professor, and a PR flack. Since her first novel, The Bluejay Shaman, in 1994, she has served on the national board of Mystery Writers of America and the International Association of Crime Writers/North America, as well as on faculty of the Jackson Hole Writers Conference where each year she critiques, speaks, and learns from writers new and old.

Check out the Lise McClendon Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LiseMcClendon

Lise McClendon also writes as Rory Tate in the 2011 thriller, JUMP CUT. Her new novel by Rory Tate is PLAN X, available now. Read her latest novel, Château des Corbeaux, 17th in the Bennett Sisters mystery series that began with Blackbird Fly.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like historical mysteries with a jazzy flavor, this book is for you. Set in Kansas City in 1939, One O'clock Jump is sprinkled with hip period dialogue, delivered by McClendon's PI hard-nosed protagonist, Dorie Lennox. Dorie smokes Lucky Strikes, drives a Packard with bald tires and, thanks to her dark past, she carries a knife. She's been hired to tail a bar girl, a simple enough assignment until the girl jumps to her death from a bridge. Or so it seems.

McClendon provides plenty of action in her twisty plot. Everyone Dorie meets has secrets. With the help of her partner, a WWI vet disabled by mustard gas, Dorie must fight through secrets and lies to solve an old mystery. In the process, she visits jazz clubs, a race track and gets beaten up by mobsters. Throw in a budding romance, and you've got a delightful start to an exciting series. I'm looking forward to the next book in the Dorrie Lennox series

[Shelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story started slow, with the plot as hard to pin down as the characters. The old haunted-by-the-past bit with the main character was overdone, to the point of being annoying. But, once the plot started to shape up to where I felt I finally understood what was really going on, it became more interesting. I am not in a hurry to see if there are more in this series; Dorie Lennox isn't a character I really liked though Amos seemed sweet and I liked Luther and Harvey. If I read another, it will be because I want to see those supporting characters again.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of fun. Kansaas City in 1939 is a fairly unusual setting, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. I liked the characters too. Altogether a great, light summer read. I bought another of this series immediately after reading this one. That's a vote, surely!

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with many of the reviews posted here.

The very beginning was dramatic, but the exposition of the back story really hurt the plot.

I love PI stories, and this was a female PI in 1939. Interesting.

The torture was unbelievable and lessened my enjoyment.

Perhaps some editing went missing. This could have been a terrific book.

I might try more by this author.

I borrowed a copy from the public library.

[Jeff Dickison · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could have I would have given this 3.5 stars. The story of a lady private eye in Kansas City in 1939 has a good atmospheric setting, but it gets a little muddled at times. I would read more in the series, however. Recommended for its setting and its feel of a time gone by.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75
Too many characters

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book for free on Amazon

This book was ok how ever I do wish the author had done more to make it more interesting.I look forward to reading more of this author's work.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a long hiatus I'm back to my A-Mystery-for-Every-State project, and I'm nearly halfway through with Missouri. Having already sampled Eileen Dreyer's St. Louis and Rett McPherson's rural Missouri, I felt it was time to find a tale set in Kansas City. www.stopyourekillingme.com helped me locate this story featuring a female private eye in 1939 K.C., Mo. The effects of the Depression are still evident, and war has just broken out in Europe; in Kansas City, Boss Tom Pendergast's downfall is recent news and the aftershocks continue to be felt. Private eye Dorie Lennox is a former track star with a bad knee and a complicated past. She works for Amos Haddam, a British-born WWI veteran suffering from the effects of mustard gas. Their main client is powerful attorney Dutch Van Vleet, and as the book opens he has asked Dorie to tail a bar girl who is supposedly the girlfriend of a mobster client. A few pages into the book, Dorie witnesses the "One O'Clock Jump" -- a young blonde jumping off the bridge into the Missouri River, Case closed? Not really. Dorie and her new friend, reporter Harvey Talbot, keep investigating as discrepancies mount and Kansas City's political and financial corruption put DOrie in danger more than once. She must face her past and her deepest fears, both to escape thugs who are trying to hurt or kill her and to have a chance at happiness she thought was impossible.

McClendon gives a good picture of Kansas City in late summer and (as best I can tell, since I wasn't alive then) of life in mid-America on the eve of World War II. True to the title, jazz music plays its part in the story and Count Basie is playing in a local nightspot. McClendon's characters are engaging and mostly believable, as is the plot, although I did get rather annoyed at how often Dorie (who carries a switchblade and seemns a pretty savvy broad)gets ambushed, Shes as good at recovering from these episodes as V. I. Warshawski. I think there are a couple more books in this series and I'll be trying to track them down. Recommended, if you can find it.

[Debbie Elholm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lisa McClendon does a decent job with this first book. Is is hard-boiled? Not quite. Our detective heroine is on the way to becoming one though. She's still too much a newbie in her newly chosen profession and it shows. But give her a few more years of experience in this new job and few more new cases and she'll make it!
Dorie's firm is hired to follow a girl which Dorie does - right off the bridge! But not everything is as it seems. When Dorie is told to quit, it doesn't make sense, then her boss ends up in jail and then the bartender, who was one of the last people to see the girl alive gets murdered, well, Dorie isn't going to quit.
The author does a wonderful job of describing Kansas City coming out of the Great Depression and heading into WWII. She really caught the flavor of the people who survived the Depression as best as they could. Some did it as honestly as they could, while others did so out of sheer desperation or need.

[pdarnold · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where to begin. For the first 2/3 of the book the dialog was... disjointed, for lack of better description. Then, either I finally adjusted to the rhythm of the story telling or it improved, which one, I'm unsure. But, on page 268 near the bottom, this phrase threw me and I was lost, just wanting the book to end: "...then gave him a sharp jab of the elbow to the solar plexus". If this tale were written about the last 20 maybe even 30 some odd years then that phrase wouldn't have been odd. However, this tale is written about the time shortly after the depression and I am pretty sure "solar plexus" wasn't the term commonly used. The book struggled to grab and hold my attention and make me care, when it finally did it threw me out, made me shake my head and think - I'm so near the end which is page 276 I *will* finish this and be glad of it.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was able to get this book free on my kindle reader when Amazon was offering it. I am sure I wouldn't have picked it out otherwise. However, it was a fun little quick story. Although a fairly quick read type book, it did move slowly at times. Despite that fact, the characters weren't all well fleshed out, and I had some difficulty keeping some of the "bad guys" differentiated. It could have been better.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book tries way too hard to mimic the feel of a hard-boiled detective novel. It absolutely beats you over the head with period slang and almost crosses the line into parody although it's certainly not meant to be one. The main character has a tragic past which we are reminded of ad nauseum. There is a decent (although overly-complicated) story and an interesting main character hiding in the book but the atmosphere-building just overwhelmed it.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I felt as if I had been dropped into the middle of a story as there seemed to be background for some of the characters that I didn't know about. I couldn't connect with any of the characters and I found some of Dorie's actions to be unbelievable.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay story. There were too many plot lines and characters and I found it a little difficult to keep everything straight. The writing reminded me of classic film noir, a genre I love. So the time period, setting and characters were fun to read about, but the plot could have been simplified.

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

good start of a mystery series

[Drew- Pickleball Librarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flash back to Kansas City during the great jazz era and times of FDR. Ms. Dorie Lennox is a tough private eye who carries a switchblade.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jitterbug-age mystery with a rough and tumble private eye from Amelia Earheart's hometown. I thoroughly enjoyed the Kansas City setting; the author captured the Kansas-Missouri nature of the city.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice vintage mystery. I would have preferred more of the cozy and less of the violence, but that's me.

[pcb · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kindle freebie - could not finish.

[Therese]

$0.0

[Ambailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit slow. I really just wanted it to end. I suppose I should give it fewer stars...

[Susan Edmonson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not worth the effort. Plods!

[Donna Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific period piece built around a good mystery.

[Anna Wadlow · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book very hard to finish.

[Mary (Biblophile) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish this one. Long, rambling, and tried too hard for atmosphere. What a difference from the other in this series I read.

[Yvonna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very seldom do I not finish a book, but this one I couldn't slog through.