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"...and I'll tell you right out that I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk."
Ace Carpenter
Created by Hamilton T. Caine (pseud. of Stephen Smoke)
"Her spirits, as well as her tits and ass, were beginning to sag more than a little."
-- Caine tries to do Chandler in Hollywood Heroes.
ACE CARPENTER is a Southern California P. I. created by Hamilton T. Caine (actually Stephen Smoke, founder and editor of Mystery Magazine). In fact, Smoke worked out the character in a handful of short stories in that magazine, before making the jump to novels.
Ace's debut, 1981's Carpenter, Detective, was nominated for a Best Paperback Original Shamus, and there was a sequel, Hollywood Heroes, that popped up five years later.
As I recall, I enjoyed the books, partcularly the first one. I thought they were pretty good solid P.I. fare, and they certainly deserved better than Living to Die, an inept 1991 B-flick starring (and directed by) Wings Hauser.
Not that it's apparently slowed down Smoke, any. He's become something of a renaissance man, with his fingers in a lot of pies. He's a musician and songwriter, author of over two dozen books (including the inspirational hard-boiled P.I. novel, Trick of the Light) and filmmaker. He also founded the short-lived Mystery Magazine, and published one of the first online mystery magazines, Hamilton Caine's Mystery Digest, on CompuServe way back in 1984.
NOVELS
SHORT STORIES
FILMS
RELATED LINKS
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
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Drop a dime. Your comments, suggestions, corrections and contributions are always welcome.
"...and I'll tell you right out that I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk."