Lunchtime read: Trouble is my business

Numerous things going on today so this is very delayed. Came home late from a couple of meetings to be confronted with some problems with broadband but looks okay now so here is the last chunk of the Chandler.

The book finishes in a different way from most of the usual Chandler stories with the hint of romance. The plot unravels like an onion with the girl rather than the boxer being at the core of it and the hero Malvern is in the dark about the exact details until almost the very end.

Highlights from the second half of Guns at Cyrano’s

* Having failed to throw the fight Trago the boxer shoots dead someone threatening him in Cyrano’s night club and is hauled off down the police station to face questioning but Malvern thinks things are fishy but walks out of the club to find his friend and car gone

* He wanders to a taxi rank gets home and then discovers the bell hop Tony is dead after having been shot tailing the boxer’s bodyguard who seems to have been in on the scam to fix the fight

* Malvern heads to the girl’s room and tells her he has to speak to her but they get on badly and he decides to leave but is confronted by two armed men who take him to a criminal’s hideout

* Once there it turns out the girl is blackmailing a senator trying to make him believe she is his daughter and because the senator is in the pocket of the criminal he dislikes the idea but after an argument, which Malvern loses with a punch to the jaw, they are all bundled in a car and taken to the senator’s house

* Once there they confront the old man and claim that the blackmailing will stop but Drago the boxer, who has been sprung from police custody, takes a dislike for him and is shot for his trouble and then the criminal turns on the senator and shoots him

* Back in the apartment block the girl tells Malvern she is leaving and he replies that his whole life has been based on dodgy money and that he will be around if she wants to be with him despite her blackmailing attempt

A review of the collection will follow shortly…