Drumbeat Erica

DIVProtecting an actor takes Drum into the seedy underworld of psychedelia/div DIVTerminal illness and regret go hand-in-hand. Two months ago, Amos Littlejohn was in the prime of life, and had plenty of energy to be enraged when his pregnant daughter was abandoned by her husband, matinee idol Ahmed Shiraz. Now stricken with leukemia, Littlejohn is near death, and beginning to regret taking out a contract on the actor’s life./divDIV /divDIVHe hires international private eye Chester Drum to call off the hit and protect Shiraz until his life is safe. On his first night on the job, Drum’s partner takes a shotgun blast meant for the actor. Wanting nothing more than to wring Shiraz’s neck, Drum follows him to Europe, where he must contend with assassins, beatniks, and the powerful effects of an experimental drug called LSD./div

DIVDrum confronts a senator to save the life of a drunken old friend/div DIVWhen Chester Drum knew him, Jack Morley was a Washington player, just a few promotions away from becoming Secretary of State. A bad divorce and a nervous breakdown later, Morley has hit rock bottom, and works in Paris for the Army ghoul squad, confirming the deaths of World War II soldiers long ago reported missing in action. Morley is content to spend the rest of his life wallowing in the bottom of a Pernod bottle, until word gets out that he is blackmailing a US senator—an accusation that could cost him his life./divDIV /divDIVThough disgusted by his old friend’s drunkenness, Drum agrees to make Morley’s case to the senator. Blackmailer or no, Morley has stumbled onto a conspiracy that dates back to the end of the war. If Drum can’t get to the bottom of it, Morley won’t be the only one to die./div

In Spain for a wedding, Drum must rescue the kidnapped bride Although a fugitive from twenty-six world governments, Axel Spade has minimal trouble crossing the border into Spain. Though briefly arrested, the guards let him go when they learn the identity of his future father-in-law: Colonel Santiago Sotomayor, whose name can open the lock of any Spanish dungeon. And so Spade and his best man, Washington PI Chester Drum, cross the frontier. Sotomayor is not thrilled to see his daughter become the sixth Mrs. Spade, but he has given his begrudging consent. The wedding party comes off like any jet-set gathering, complete with one of the fiancée’s ex-lovers making threats against Spade’s life. But one key piece never arrives: the bride. She has been kidnapped, and to get her back, Drum and Spade will pit their wits against the toughest thugs and slipperiest bureaucrats that Fascist Spain has to offer.

DIVA sadistic KGB colonel hires Drum to locate a dead man/div DIVAxel 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./divDIV /divDIVDrum’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./div

Preliminary Material -- INTRODUCTION -- HISTORY AND THE NOVEL: AN OVERVIEW -- MASTERING THE ART: THE HISTORICAL NOVEL AND LOCAL COLOR -- BETWEEN MAGIC AND MADNESS: A PORTRAIT OF SPAIN AND ITS NEUROSES -- POSTMODERN CRITIQUE AND THE HAND OF THE HISTORIAN -- CHAOS, COMPLEXITY AND INTERPRETATION -- BEYOND REFERENCE: HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION IMPINGED BY SCIENCE FICTION -- THE NOVEL NEVER ENDS: ON ALTERNATIVE WORLDS, JEWISH CONNECTIONS AND INFINITE REGRESS -- CONCLUDING REMARKS -- NOVELS PUBLISHED BY MILTON LESSER UNDER THE FOLLOWING NAMES OR PSEUDONYMS -- SHORT STORIES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.

DIVAn old flame’s fiancé is missing, and only Drum can save him from the Soviets/div DIVChester Drum will never love another woman the way he loves Marianne. After years of on-and-off romance, he tells her that his work as a private detective is too dangerous for him to ever marry, so she ends the affair and moves to West Berlin, to report on the Cold War from its front lines. There she falls in love with Quentin Hammond, ace foreign correspondent, and Drum is happy for her until her new man disappears behind the Iron Curtain. She telegraphs for help, and Drum is on the next plane./divDIV /divDIVHammond was close to winning the scoop of the century, by cooperating with an exiled East German dissident to tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall and free thousands of people from the other side. Before they could complete their audacious scheme, though, the Stasi kidnapped them. Only Drum has the skills to go behind the wall and return with the man who’s stolen the woman he loves./div

DIVWhen Drum picks up a hitchhiker, trouble follows her into the car/divDIV A monsoon is hammering Washington, DC, when Chester Drum spots Anita Sparrow on the roadside in the middle of the night. Sixteen, frail, and soaking wet, she is trying to find help for her brother, Donny, a photographer with cerebral palsy who was beaten nearly to death a mile up the road. Drum takes Donny to the hospital and drives Anita home, where he finds her house ransacked, her brother’s darkroom destroyed. It seems Donny took a picture of something he wasn’t supposed to see, and powerful men will kill to ensure the negative is never developed./divDIV /divDIVOn top of it all, Drum soon learns that the Sparrows have ties to some of the biggest names inside the Beltway, and Anita is not as innocent as she appears. Her family story simmers with pornography, corruption, and murder—not polite topics for dinner table conversation, but ones that make Chester Drum feel right at home. /div