Mr. Card is no ordinary down-and- out Private Eye. He is a man who exists fully on an alternative mental plain. A city not unlike San Francisco where he is a tough guy detective in the Dashiell Hammett’/Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler/ Phillip Marlowe tradition. Where like Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, who came along later, he has a sexy, knockout secretary who’s crazy for him. So where everything’s wrong for him in San Francisco, everything’s right for him in Babylon. And much of the novel’s narrative is addressed to him balancing these two plains of existence.
- Trinkfest
- Zynisch
- Unterhaltsam
His mother, his landlady, a peg-legged manager of the city morgue, a tough cop (Sgt. Rink)that no criminal should ever want to encounter and a couple of Femme Fatales that neither Bogie or Dick Powell ever had to deal with.
