Drumbeat - Marianne

A sadistic KGB colonel hires Drum to locate a dead man. Axel Spade would not have liked the way he died. An international fugitive, Spade would have preferred being gored by a bull or gunned down by Interpol to dying quietly in his bed. But a weak heart claimed him in his sleep, and so Chester Drum, Washington PI and the closest thing Spade had to a friend, scatters his ashes in the Atlantic. Drum's old flame, Marianne Baker, is by his side, but she leaves before grief has a chance to reignite their faded passion. That night, Drum is awoken by a KGB operative who has kidnapped Marianne. Axel Spade is alive, the agent insists, and he wants Drum to find him. To save Marianne, Drum will do the impossible, and bring Axel Spade back from the dead. Review quote "Very few writers of the tough private-eye story can tell it more accurately than Mr. Marlowe, or with such taut understatement of violence and sex." - The New York Times Book Review "A great pulpster ... always one of my favorites." - Ed Gorman, author of The Poker Club "Often brash and violent ... with an impish sense of humor." - The Independent Biographical note 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.