Created by Niklas Three
It’s 1999 and “hard-boiled” Windy City dicks TYRONE GABLE and RINTY “THE GAFFER” MCLAREN are the cash-strapped stars of the action-packed, wise-cracking Roll (2023), venturing deep into Dick Francis territory, travelling to Louisiana to track down a prized thoroughbred that has disappeared.
It’s all narrated by the surpisingly chatty Gable, a jazz-loving former Marine and ex-cop who suffered a fall from grace with the Chicago PD, while his older partner Gaffer is a Korean War vet and former ranked middleweight. But their two-man agency is floundering, thanks to a massive legal loss, and they jump at the chance to head south.
They drink, they banter and Gable hits on several women (Gaffer has a girlfriend) and get into all sorts of trouble, detecting among the horsey set, against a well-rendered setting.
Alas, Roll apparently sank like a stone upon its initial, digital-only release. A half-decent review from Kirkus almost a year later, and a paid 2025 review from Publishers Weekly that popped up two years after publication may change that, but we’ll see.
NOVELS
- Roll (2023) | Kindle it!
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
