Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Peril Is My Pay
    Peril Is My Pay
    Peril Is My Pay
    Ebook240 pages2 hours

    Peril Is My Pay

    By Stephen Marlowe

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In Rome for the Olympics, Drum witnesses an assassination
    When he was in college, Kyle Ryder picked up athletic records effortlessly. Now he picks up girls. An Olympic-quality javelin thrower, he has recently fallen for a Czechoslovakian Amazon named Hilda, whose weapon of choice is the discus. On the eve of the Rome summer Olympics, Kyle’s father hires private detective Chester Drum to follow his son. He doesn’t mind the girl—it’s her Soviet handlers who make him nervous. The Olympic torch hasn’t even been lit when their love affair takes its first casualty. Their Italian go-between, Signor Mozzoni, is crossing the street when a Citroën runs him down. With their protector dead, Kyle and his girlfriend vanish. If Drum doesn’t find the missing athletes quickly, the Soviet trainers will give them a workout from which they’ll never recover.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateApr 17, 2012
    ISBN9781453252529
    Peril Is My Pay
    Author

    Stephen Marlowe

    Stephen Marlowe (1928–2008) was the author of more than fifty novels, including nearly two dozen featuring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum. Born Milton Lesser, Marlowe was raised in Brooklyn and attended the College of William and Mary. After several years writing science fiction under his given name, he legally adopted his pen name, and began focusing on Chester Drum, the Washington-based detective who first appeared in The Second Longest Night (1955). Although a private detective akin to Raymond Chandler’s characters, Drum was distinguished by his jet-setting lifestyle, which carried him to various exotic locales from Mecca to South America. These espionage-tinged stories won Marlowe acclaim, and he produced more than one a year before ending the series in 1968. After spending the 1970s writing suspense novels like The Summit (1970) and The Cawthorn Journals (1975), Marlowe turned to scholarly historical fiction. He lived much of his life abroad, in Switzerland, Spain, and France, and died in Virginia in 2008. 

    Read more from Stephen Marlowe

    Related to Peril Is My Pay

    Titles in the series (28)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Hard-boiled Mystery For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Hello, Grim Reaper

      Dec 15, 2021

      She was a babe. A fully paid-up, card-carrying babe. There was absolutely no doubt about it, and she was heading straight for me. She was almost sprinting towards me across the recently reimagined lobby of Claridge’s. She looked up, her scarlet-anoin

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Emperors of Existence

      Dec 28, 2018

      The Emperors of Existence
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ineffectual Tribute to Len

      Mar 15, 2019

      After graduate school I hung around another year and drove a cab for Iowa City Yellow Cab. The cab was a boat, a Chevrolet Caprice wagon. I could have put a mattress in the back and lived in it. I didn’t hate the job. I’d sit in the Kroger parking lo

      24 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      Justin Timberlake and the Whoever of Whatever: Fame Drags You Down.: Fame drags you down.

      Sep 19, 2013

      About six years ago, I was putting a new roof on a 200-year-old house on an island in Maine when I got a call from Justin Timberlake’s cousin and assistant, a girl named Melissa. I put down my nail gun, told my boss I was taking five, and answered.

      22 min read

    • Article

      The heartbeat OF PARIS

      Apr 10, 2024

      The heartbeat OF PARIS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Too Much Seinfeld

      Nov 30, 2017

      Too Much Seinfeld
      8 min read

    • Article

      Are You Jewish?

      Sep 1, 2022

      Are You Jewish?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Karolina

      Jun 15, 2019

      I first saw Karolina outside the Sumesa on the corner of Avenidas Oaxaca and Álvaro Obregón. She was smoking a stubby cigarette, a sled-like backpack hitched to her shoulders. I stopped short, felt my heart lurch. Could it be? Karolina was my brother

      31 min read

    • Article

      6667 Hollywood Boulevard

      Jul 2, 2019

      6667 Hollywood Boulevard
      7 min read

    • Article

      Remembering Ricky Jay

      Jun 1, 2019

      Remembering Ricky Jay
      15 min read

    • Article

      Ann Beattie

      Sep 15, 2017

      I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. Even the friendly paperboy who somet

      23 min read

    • Article

      POISON ON Pink Paper

      Dec 23, 2019

      POISON ON Pink Paper
      8 min read

    • Article

      Richard Babcock

      Nov 7, 2020

      Richard Babcock
      2 min read

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      Past Imperfect

      Sep 2, 2023

      Past Imperfect
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Traveler

      Oct 1, 2020

      The Traveler
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Peril Is My Pay

    5/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      If you read enough of the Chester Drum series, sooner or later you will feel as if you have explored all of Europe and South America without stepping on a plane. Marlowe was an intrepid traveler and he filled his books with the sights, sounds, and tastes of the exotic lands he favored. Drum is as cynical and hardboiled as any American detective, but Marlowe takes his detective and plops him all over the world for his adventures. These novels are punctuated by great writing with lots of action.

      “Peril Is My Pay” is the 12th of the 20 Drum novels and it is a terrific read, but they all are. This one, however, doesn’t begin with an ordinary case in or around Washington D.C. Rather, it begins in Rome as the Olympic teams are preparing for the games only a week away. It takes Drum through the piazzas of Rome, the trattorias, the Spanish steps, and involves him a case involving Olympic athletes, possible Czech defectors, the Communists racing around to stop defections, a mad artist who does it with mirrors, an international smuggler who Drum had captured years earlier, and a collection of odd characters.

      The story also may begin in Rome, but it also takes Drum into the heart of France and Germany, from medieval festivals to Hamburg’s mudwrestling and topless horseback riding nightclubs.
      At times, the plot and the motivations of the various characters gets a bit convoluted, but the story is so filled with action and shoot-outs and fights and crosses and doublecrosses that it really doesn’t matter.

      If you are looking for a hardboiled adventure novel with international intrigue like a James Bond story, you can’t do any better than this yarn. This is pure good stuff, indeed.

    Book preview

    Peril Is My Pay - Stephen Marlowe

     Lebook_preview_excerpt.html}\[ȱ ov~8c(Z͈H=!G1EH@A()Η1?w7]ws2$U8yQzYۗibwͻ~,?-^Ѿ|G^}(>}*wRG߅PS7+NcE|s}snP?֧y)&ʏu]*7)uEU4Aj{)?=4k1t?[9>M]Qbin7{BW9,tܪltY5MF{sb[>Thυovd5H]؏йv*0cϭ;.4TŦq-SiK\䑻 7n-~|Ycm&NT ;!`IyvW.A1vR}y;o4B#/-v]~w;l+j4A>)o7!}JYx/< kM+3㗱H0j3ޕ5B$\8x-`x(a3WfhȰ3V\W4cuoP(kO|p.Z17 x]΋k܈bܩhmqgpCYH`tzoUA߸)cԜ kB ގ=5 nB_☝ ;Xt5I^6w)n~<;'NR8s~/Cڼo.Eex+?e3F&PUb-mTb-l;/gZ:Faq|W!DGׅT˛jDi)X2zi ek:}h',c0z;O]?lquT0H;X˂0iG rp k3L3E X> f Cy[5Y76V]6Yīմ W.Mxɖ&YmҠR d5o-1zcL9r`wI3 (qǿN]R ,m/gOQaLTQ֯Q׸{ƒ 1o 0\_c<5^5Y':@A2TY4 #v5DlH,L'ô381Iᬝo/}'61w=mθXFl vfF*y ֊XM˽!$ºu.ro"R3^יgFAJ16s`4_[4p?!ѧJ䝑ec+GjY* ҮA|0=lxNМf" X.@<hEr0J$dv{Ieޑq8x|;T3GY;Qm.M䁖qE#N1/GU}9`qrIz %En޿|| mQ RèaI4nMeD׵^q#I:DBEbp}!oBs*]wfP b^q&@P1;Cy^ZwU jo4 UDWY{}SO[M.ai(VXˤɲ6V*q 4L: bxё ;M'"~/W)Rx Ș҄`-{p%HQ]8ǐx)uz>5fފPfaLl-Ѵwc㘀C-]_9][vI<7G0m2r e,hkQ\Рـ .N|pЀlHǘ9zeyIjFGWmYyMJ#|2-H*7 #Mo&a'aFR9V8B~9B)w>щ>ŸBVXIJP\4~.pBmlaD2tV{{\vn*EaJ>*D-KcDi!NCy%4u`*d&/ʆ*}GE .}`+7VR.le TJ _%2ӆ%%Y-!ϓ}&zC 7V``T y@<5q 9W.E.58 c.(GؘΉ5W2N;$]5`'ȢC/nn~[Y./DX+o0% 5MIa8 ܥ*I)0B,l`A'T`# `Kk5BbT&FCu 0wd |_ bΎnV|lQ˷W;kU8+hB6+vƱH^cLmIRdZ RwOR7J$ky Zg~xU'|G#XGHoeؚi&BհEܲ`OSDm{zGa^9PnV>m+F?#3xKV5yn}ۮBCۺOMbٳ@UYVH~CFגuR9YHA~@Ì;B/.O_&4{f RIDaRfWUzH8Y$#Ե+X~ gyFHq! WѧxK|jEAX?աqo=J? K[ysQqR[]pTly^p{(aR=w+#&Z̓u4.ҁ_6S+K?tBDH.Y}j'kR׺ԁe7M>Q0%,Ҧ} 3*'a[)O/Sr 芉3ͲA"w z}+i 6 QI*P/By!a`+р@H-.o SQײ R_a½8Đ#/0(]`Ѽc% ~R½-,>*WRWe[a)@uVz!^Ƚ万Ɋ64d[ų[LOe@͔[J>o^%!j 74]Ֆå)|$= d#N#'bpI߇2 4+%X0=wRyEZ(~` r %+$aNwHu N TɃtRGS37G7sT`54p:zV^bQ^IJ'M[]_ brRZ+E5wXowwJU`A؎ƀ~b>8Mh?83iT+U"H# 3VnIR18fZASy($D|)>0$)L3`1XͤDghE`لk8T dQ|VI8oZz~Jmqy}E^d0Tb%{# +# j^iG߻0 i-2v#z7ݓZ,o.eoxI->^|;0mG[\&DҫԲk%ivU@pǼHYOcK܍jL#{2r.=K_=;QN[#r,M~p$5Z2k _P3r[F:lc7)R/Q|u =)[2Y R-^jM ys<) lk1L,}$DN|4@EB֢xVkmj%qz%}!Djx}w׽vl3o66oi-FHQf՗pr=^lY_L]^破ݬ%ZRٛԞ2 $\xC21ufEFи 'qaS{kS , #Ԥ */Ws9 0?[dWt@kRQlS,s@::G^`}xv s?=b]IǴ)"C=4@kӷ6 l;KjK9о8ʩna#M`#SǢH%F5KF"jPێḃVn8Tec U417IWq .sϪFѴ6gRG+#|N=#2UA_) MBد~}YP {as#fŸk1iMls):>ZHid~8yw螉o''*'yByfn9YlwR91R$?jI/gl>xs4*eK@ͯg&8O |y9sƑ4={|K Jk=xi]G-;sa@  HGHZE;ˉeUAC<-NjteTh$1nnݳ|_CC_Z\ Ⰿt::׸sK-9xyLgK.vu!66(wA5Ӕ0A$Q4k^l[8OܯkQKm]M/О M/ֽؐ;v Z+X\5p=|wo?HWMI-=|]޶fq9 &un>&2'ά:ɬiU7 : 5[T'=4Ǵ:6HI+9#Ix1[&G^IFA9+LHSBL{^/AOE7qپ81j LGshʷPLZ#ְ>tǍWǾ?^%l[+騇 )u1%Xvp> |rg5yyr8QE@6"~ Oj͝ƊKZZϼwùqN8VҎh& 8tdu013
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1