Rubout At the Onyx
(1981)(The first book in the Harry MacNeil mystery series)
A novel by H Paul Jeffers
La Guardia is the mayor of New York City. The rich New Yorkers are looking down on the city from the Rainbow Room. Paul Whiteman is the King of Jazz. And up in his apartment on Riverside Drive George Gershwin is asking his friends, including Whiteman, in to hear one of his newest compositions, "Summertime."
On Fifty-second Street is the famous Onyx Club, owned by Joe Helbock, ex-bootlegger. The Onyx is famous mostly because of the jazz greats who play there.
Harry MacNeil, ex-cop, now working as a private eye, lives and works above the Onyx. But he hadn't been in the club on the New Year's Eve when, while Art Tatum was playing the piano, two of Owney Madden's boys came into the club and gunned down a two-bit mobster named Joey Seldes.
Of course, Harry is interested in this rubout. And considerably more so when Seldes's widow, a real looker with a red Greta Garbo hat and a red clinging dress, turnes up in his office and says, dabbing at a tear-filled eye, "Joey talked about you a lot. He said you were a man who could be trusted. He told me that if I ever needed help you were a good man to keep in mind."
Her husband's abrupt departure from the earth isn't the only thing on the lady's mind. A clipping about a Forty-seventh Street diamond robbery and the gun she's found among her late husband's belongings have caught her attention.
She wants to hire Harry. He resists -- at first. And, because shortly thereafter he capitulates, he becomes involved in more than even a private eye might expect to find.
This novel is as exciting as the world in which it is set -- and as hot as the jazz on The Street.
Genre: Mystery
On Fifty-second Street is the famous Onyx Club, owned by Joe Helbock, ex-bootlegger. The Onyx is famous mostly because of the jazz greats who play there.
Harry MacNeil, ex-cop, now working as a private eye, lives and works above the Onyx. But he hadn't been in the club on the New Year's Eve when, while Art Tatum was playing the piano, two of Owney Madden's boys came into the club and gunned down a two-bit mobster named Joey Seldes.
Of course, Harry is interested in this rubout. And considerably more so when Seldes's widow, a real looker with a red Greta Garbo hat and a red clinging dress, turnes up in his office and says, dabbing at a tear-filled eye, "Joey talked about you a lot. He said you were a man who could be trusted. He told me that if I ever needed help you were a good man to keep in mind."
Her husband's abrupt departure from the earth isn't the only thing on the lady's mind. A clipping about a Forty-seventh Street diamond robbery and the gun she's found among her late husband's belongings have caught her attention.
She wants to hire Harry. He resists -- at first. And, because shortly thereafter he capitulates, he becomes involved in more than even a private eye might expect to find.
This novel is as exciting as the world in which it is set -- and as hot as the jazz on The Street.
Genre: Mystery
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