Phil Allman, P.I. Series

Private Investigator Phil Allman is in pursuit of Jesse Garon Presley, the heretofore thought stillborn twin brother of Elvis Presley. Along the way, Allman also seeks wealth, family stability, and love, not to mention the perpetrator(s) of three murders as he travels from his hometown of Philadelphia to New York City to the New Jersey shore, and ultimately to Memphis. What Allman finds makes for an entertaining and suspenseful read. Jesse Garon is a noir detective novel, and the first in a series featuring Allman, a P.I. with a hard-boiled yet modern sensibility, sensitivity, and sense of humor.

How far can you push a man? In the second Phil Allman P.I. detective novel, Allman tackles the most important and agonizing case of his career. In AND I LOVE HER, we get a noir glimpse into a marriage gone bad... and a divorce and custody battle gone worse, set against a backdrop of Beatles songs. Someone killed Allman’s ex-wife... and that someone may be Allman himself. Through twists, turns, and several other murders, the Philadelphia police force comes to believe that Allman is the most likely killer. Because sometimes you can push a man just far enough...

Bored and desolate, the fortyish divorced Allman begins an innocent, though questionable online dialogue with the pretty teen Marci Downes. Phil’s initial “comments” of advice plunge into something deeper, as he descends into the abyss of forbidden love, put to the test when Marci is kidnapped. Romantic, suspenseful, often funny, and certainly controversial, Young Blood is both a cautionary tale for this still new virtual world, a kind of Lolita for the 21st century, and in the end, a love story...of sorts. Once you start to read it, I am confident that you will be hooked...just like Phil.

Felix Brigati, New Jersey rock legend, has been getting threatening, anonymous texts. He hires an old acquaintance, Phil Allman, a private investigator, to safeguard him, not trusting those already in his camp, due to the personal nature of the messages. Instead of protection, the desolate Allman holds his hero captive in the fortified basement of his deceased uncle’s secluded house in rural Pennsylvania, while they try to determine who is harassing Felix. Upon returning from an errand, Allman finds Brigati gone. Did Brigati somehow escape? Was he abducted by his stalker? If not, by whom? It is crucial that Phil finds Felix before he gets arrested for his own kidnapping, or real harm comes to the music superstar. Suspenseful, insightful, and surprisingly funny, Freeze Out is a noir elegy on middle-aged loneliness and the duality of fame.

Like a latter-day Don Quixote, a delusional Phil Allman harkens for a time when men were chivalrous and brave. and women were virtuous and circumspect. With Dan Lee, his own Sancho Panza-like sidekick, he ventures into the wilderness, which in twenty-first century America is the sordid world of online dating. There they set forth to save damsels in distress and punish evil-doers, whether real or imagined. A Man Out Of Time is the seventh book in the Phil Allman, P.I. series, and it finds our hero's already deteriorating sanity at its nadir. Dan Lee, a successful, retired IT professional, assists in his quest, to save Phil from himself, and to finally engage with the world outside of his cloistered and lonesome bubble. Along the way, they find a damaged but resilient young woman; does she really need saving, and do the men who have allegedly abused her deserve retribution? Such is the moral quandary of our adventurers who try to preserve innocence in a corrupt world.

Expecting to hold onto her was like trying to keep water in the palm of your hand. In the guise of a tough, noir detective novel, TORMENT, the sixth in Brett Wallach's Phil Allman, P.I. series, is actually a poetic, romantic elegy on obsessive love. The street-smart humor and colorful cast of characters that have been staples of the series remain, but the sad cloud of unrequited love hangs over everything. Philadelphia Detective Allman's ex-wife, the young and beautiful Marci Downes, has been murdered, and Phil is arrested for the crime, and is under suspicion for killing several others who got close to her. Phil's depression over losing Marci, and its resulting memory lapses, have Phil doubting his own innocence. The mystery will keep you guessing until the very end.

Each of us, I suppose, has had a 'to be or not to be’ moment. We wonder, during those dark minutes, if maintaining our existence is worth the pain and effort. Happily, most of us shrug off such thoughts and plod along, hoping for brighter times down the road. And so begins Susceptible, a hard-boiled detective story, with the added dimension of its investigating not only "whodunit", but also the human conditions of success and failure, family and detachment, love and loss, and ultimately, life and death. Philadelphia Private Investigator Phil Allman explores the suspicious suicide of a man whose life uncomfortably mirrors his own, leading him to examine the value of his own existence. Susceptible is at times elegiac, but more often funny; it is occasionally fatalistic, but in the end, is life affirming.

How can a man write a sincere feminist novel? By making his protagonist a full-blown misogynist of course. The One You Never Seen Before is the eighth book in the Phil Allman, P.I. series, and its title is taken from the Rolling Stones’ notorious song “Midnight Rambler” about a brutal sexual assault, and in this novel which takes place in the meaner streets of Philadelphia, Phil confronts and investigates his misogynistic cousin (alter ego?) Mick, to determine if he raped and murdered a young mother whom they both dated. Or was it the woman’s abusive ex? This shockingly frank novel looks at the world of online dating through both the woman-hating Mick’s perspective, as well as that of his romantic cousin Phil’s. The language of this novel is at times coarse; it is, however, a morality tale in the end, though it takes some rough roads to get there.