Timothy Cone

Created by Lawrence Sanders
(1920-98)

“Listen, I just don’t like people who think they own the world.”
— Timothy Cone, in Timothy’s Game

TIMOTHY CONE‘s a big, tall, scrawny kinda guy, eccentric and obsessive as all get out; a loner with stooped shoulders, a shambling gait, and big ears, prowling the boardrooms and the bedrooms of the Big Apple in constant need of a shave.

Yep, we’re deep into Lawrence Sanders territory here, but Timothy’s a far cry from the dapper Archy McNally or any of Sanders’ other slick investigators. Cone’s perpetually rumpled and seems to exist mostly on a diet of junkfood, Popov vodka, and other people’s cigarettes.

Yep, he’s dirt cheap, too.

Appealing, right?

The only reason anyone puts up with him is that he’s a brilliant detective who routinely saves his employer, Holdering and Company (a firm specializing in corporate intelligence and white collar crime) millions of simolies.

Of course it helps that he’s having an affair with his direct superior, Samantha Whatley, who’s in charge of all investigators at Holdering, and doesn’t seem particularly fond of Cone — despite their regular booty calls,  her favourite term of endearment seems to be “ass-hole.”

The attraction, then, must be that he’s, as she says, “hung like a donkey.”

Like I said, we’re on Sander’s turf here.

A decorated Marine who saw action in Vietnam, Cone may be unorthodox, but part of his success may lie in his passion for “getting the bad guys.” As he puts it, “Sure I believe in rules… I spent three years of my life with no rules, and I didn’t like it. I want rules. Standards. If you can’t measure up, get off the world. That’s what we’re dealing with: people who don’t follow the rules. Fuck ’em!”

Timothy appeared in two collections of novellas, although, as far as I can figure, none of the novellas appeared anywhere but in the collections, except for one story that may — or may not — have popped up in Playboy.

I dunno — Sanders was no critical darling, but I loved these books.

Sanders created several other private eyes and investigators, including Samuel Todd, Joshua Bigg, Mary Lou “Dunk” Bateson, Dora Conti and Wolf Lannihan.

UNDER OATH

• “What Sanders doesn’t know about insider trading, crooked takeover bids, blackmail, greenmail and the way cops and racketeers think and talk is nobody’s business. And he knows quite a bit about human psychology, too.”
  — Publishers’ Weekly on Timothy’s Game

• “… unusually sloppy, thoroughly hackneyed offering from an uneven, crass mass-producer… Grossly synthetic and thoroughly unappealing: only for Sanders’ most undiscriminating fans.”
  — Kirkus Reviews on Timothy’s Game

NOVELLAS

• “The Wall Street Dick” (1987, The Timothy Files)
• “The Whirligig Action”(1987, The Timothy Files)
• “A Covey of Cousins” (1987, The Timothy Files)
• “Run, Sally, Run” (July 1988, Playboy; also Timothy’s Game)
• “A Case of the Shorts” (1988, Timothy’s Game)
• “One From Column A” (1988, Timothy’s Game)

COLLECTIONS

• The Timothy Files (1987) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Timothy’s Game (1988) | Buy this book | Kindle it!

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Start Spreading the News…
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Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.