Created by Thomas Chastain
 High-flying New York private eye J. T. SPANNER drives a T-Bird, and has two ex-wives on the payroll. The dude must have charm to burn. He stars in two suspense-filled novels, Pandora’s Box (1974) and Vital Statistics (1977), that spotlighted his private investigative skills and what John Conquest in Trouble is Their Business calls “bizarre and deftly wrought plots,” set against the big city backdrop of the Big Apple.
Author Chastain has another New York detective, Max Kaufman, of the NYPD, who teamed up with Spanner in 1974’s Pandora’s Box, and appeared solo in 1976’s 911. But Chastain is probably best known for penning the bestselling you-solve-its Who Killed the Robins Family (1983) and its sequel, The Revenge of the Robins Family (1984), each which offered $10,000 to whoever figured out the solution–or possibly as the guy who chosen by the Erle Stanley Gardner estate to pen a few books about Perry Mason.
NOVELS
- Pandora’s Box (1974) |Â Buy this book
- Vital Statistics (1977)Â |Â Buy this book