Jeopardy Is My Job

By Stephen Marlowe

Drum looks for a missing American in a sea of degenerate expats.

An American has vanished in Spain, and it's his father, not his wife, who wants him found. When Chester Drum arrives in Iberia, legs aching from the three-thousand-mile flight, he finds Andrea Hartshorn not panicked, not mourning, but hosting the party of the year. World-weary expatriates mill about the villa, guzzling her liquor and dancing, without a thought for their missing countryman. Andrea is far from sober, but finally Drum gets her to open up. Of course she wants her husband back. But more than that, she wants her daughter.

Robbie was last seen going south to Fuengirola, to confront a crippled bullfighter named Ruy Fuentes, who had been courting the Hartshorns' toreador-mad daughter. Drum sets out to find the missing Hartshorns, and learns that in Spain, a bull's horn is not the only romantic way to die.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784087180

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. 

Reviews for Jeopardy Is My Job

[davewilde-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another in a long line of excellent Chester Drum novels. Generally, these books have Drum get involved in a case in the States, but somehow it involves a diplomat or someone of that ilk and Drum heads overseas to find them and mete out justice. "Jeopardy," however takes place entirely in the Costa del Sol, the southern region of Spain stretching from Malaga to Gibraltar and famous for its bullfights and fabulous beaches. In 1962, when "Jeopardy" was published, this was one of the places for the rich, lazy, drunk ones to gather. And, Marlowe weaves it all into this story from the indolent, drunk, sex-crazed, wealthy expatriates to the common fishermen and smugglers. Marlowe was well-known for his attention to the details of his exotic locales, which he knew well from his many travels.

This book, like the others in this top-notch series is plain old good stuff. Here, Drum operates as a detective on a missing persons case, but without any standing whatsoever in this foreign country. The story is fast-moving and filled with action. Drum has the cynicism and wit appropriate for a hard-boiled detective, but that cynicism doesn't overwhelm the story.

Prepare for a journey to the exotic coast of Spain with its charm and manners and bullfighting. A highly recommended novel.