Created by J.M.T. Miller
Pseudonym of Janice M. Tubbs-Miller
1944-
Okay, ARTIE WEATHERBY doesn’t have exactly a rough-and-tough name like Mike Hammer, but he makes do. Or at least he thinks he does.
So what if his beverage of choice is lime-flavored mineral water? Artie’s one smug guy, can even get a tad self-righteous, and he listens to Disney tunes. Maybe he thinks he’s Elvis Cole?
He isn’t.
But see if any of this sounds familiar?
Artie’s a former Vietnam vet who received Special Services Training, and “it took a long time to get (his) life together after (he) came back from the war.” From there, after the usual round of booze and drugs (which he finally managed to lick with the help of an old Army buddy who just happened to run a rehab centre) Artie went through law school on the GI Bill and after various odd jobs, found himself making a living of sorts as a private eye in an unnamed southern California city (San Diego? Somewhere in the southwest U.S., anyway).
He appeared in three paperback originals, but the series never really caught on, perhaps because it was hard to pin down Artie, both as a character and geographically. In the first, Weatherby (1987), he’s a Elvis Cole wannabe, possibly in San Diego, while his second outing, On a Dead Man’s Chest (1989) has him out to sea looking for pirate treasure and the third, The Big Lie (1994), has him going up against a New Age cult in Los Angeles.
Author Miller writes about another detective, Alexis Albright, a female ex-cop turned Honolulu private detective, who appears in a couple of books.
UNDER OATH
- “Totally generic, in other words, in a semi-macho sort of way.”
— Mystery*File
NOVELS
- Weatherby (1987) | Buy this book
- On a Dead Man’s Chest (1989) | Buy this book
- The Big Lie (1994) | Buy this book
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- San Diego Eyes
America’s Finest City’s Finest Eyes
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
