Created by Charles John Harper
Pseudonym of Charlie Rethwisch
Also known as C.J. Harper
Imagine a world-weary P.I. working the mean streets of 1940s Los Angeles with a tiny, rundown office on the sixth floor of the Cahuenga Building on Hollywood Boulevard.
And now imagine it’s NOT Philip Marlowe.
Nope, struggling private eye DARROW NASH‘s much smaller office is down the hall.
That’s the big concept/conceit behind long-running if sporadic series of short stories. And just to rub it in, he and Marlowe occasionally talk shop.
The stories themselves aren’t bad — Harper has a definite feel for this type of story — although the cutie pie namedropping occasionally gets to me.
Try as he might, Nash is not Marlowe; and Harper is not Chandler. Then again, who is?
Still, the author definitely knows his stuff, and the series has grown on me. One of the stories even graced the pages of The Best American Mystery Stories 2017, which prompted Publishers Weekly to declare “Charles John Harper’s hard-boiled yarn, “Lovers and Thieves,” will make fans of the subgenre hope that its PI lead, Darrow Nash, will walk the mean streets of L.A. again..”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles John Harper is an attorney and an Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee who has had several short stories published in both Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. He’s also been shortlisted twice for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger Award. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Dana.
SHORT STORIES
- “The Coronation Coin” (February 2008″, EQMM)
- “The Sleepless Soul” (March/April 2008, EQMM)
- “The Brass Compass” (July 2009, EQMM)
- “Lovers and Thieves” (April 2016, AHMM)
- “Smoke and Mirrors” (March/April 2025, EQMM)
- “The Shadows” (May/June 2025, EQMM)
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Charles John Harper: writer – attorney – hockey player – whatever
The author’s official site. - Hollywood Dicks
Tinsel Town Troupers
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
