Golden Age of Detective Fiction

New York private detective Timothy Dane lives by his wits and fists in this compact first book by William Ard. Dane, down to his last dime and facing eviction, hopes his luck will turn around soon. A well-stacked blonde with a hoard of bills tells a dubious story about a no-good husband and asks him to meet him at a seedy downtown bar. Dane takes the cash and his revolver but soon has more than he bargained for and is roughed up badly.

When he tracks down the vampy blonde, she tells him that the gang she’s mixed up in drugged her and took suggestive photographs of her that were sold to a private collector. Embarrassed and ashamed, she begs Dane to get the negatives back and destroy them. In his quest to track down these photographs, Dane uncovers that five other women have been photographed and their pictures sold. The gang playing these tawdry pictures will stop at nothing to cover their tracks, including arson, fraud, and, if Dane doesn’t watch his step, murder.

The Review

The Perfect Frame is a slim, no-frills, hardboiled mystery where the gumshoe fights for a beautiful dame against the brutal machinations of a corrupt city. It’s a fast read of only 182 pages, but there’s all the standard hardboiled fare: bar fights with ham-fisted men, leggy call girls who need a white knight, sleazy mob bosses, and private detectives who are only slightly on the right side of the law. 

The mystery, which starts as a simple divorce case, is about corporate greed and their simpatico relationship with crooks in the hope of making a buck. The tale of a beautiful naive singer taken advantage of by her powerful bosses at a nightclub is as old as nightclubs, but there’s nothing tired or trite about The Perfect Frame. Maybe it’s because you’re going along at a breakneck clip, and there are no fatty discursions or subplots to give the plot a moment to breathe.

A natural breath of fresh air is the romance between Dane and his client, which is an act at first but soon develops into a real connection. Sally, the beautiful vamp, probably won’t be in Ard’s next Timothy Dane book, but she was sweet and sultry, and I’d like her to break my heart again.

I highly recommend The Perfect Frame by William Ard and can’t wait to read his follow-up novel:38