Private investigator, Rhonie Lude, agrees to find the estranged daughter of retired FBI agent, Oliver Kurtz. Once her missing person’s case turns into a homicide every lead pulls her deeper into a web of deception.
Down on her luck, private investigator, Rhonie Lude, agrees to find the estranged daughter of retired FBI agent, Oliver Kurtz. Despite his eccentricities, the job seems simple enough--tail and report. Protect, if necessary, but Kurtz's continuous refusal to provide Lude critical information gives rise to suspicion.
When a mob-related cold case surfaces in Lude’s investigation, the truth rears its ugly head in the direction of the person she is hired to protect. Lude's missing person's case soon becomes a homicide and every lead pulls her deeper into a web of deception. Each exposed lie edges her closer to becoming the killer’s next victim and cuts a straight path to the only man she trusts—a man Lude now suspects has ties to the mob and police corruption.
Risks aside, Lude is determined to expose the sinister killer who will stop at nothing to keep a deadly secret buried.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Tuesday, October 9, 1962 – Hollywood, California
The mail had just arrived but it was too early to sift through the usual notices of past due bills. I tossed the mail onto the kitchen table and walked away when I noticed a small square envelope had fallen to the floor. The L. A. postmark was dated two days earlier. My name and address were scrawled across the front in heavy strokes of black ink.
It was bold. It was direct. It was personal and the lack of a return address immediately sparked my interest. I studied the distinctive handwriting for a second or two then ripped it open.
Miss Lude, must talk, noon, October 9, at the Chester House, 12346 Canyon Rd. ~ Oliver Kurtz.
Those fourteen little words made me pull out a chair and light a cigarette. Penniless or not, I had two hours to decide if this was a prospective client and if I was desperate enough to take the bait. I studied the handwriting again as if the answer to who Oliver Kurtz was and the reason for the meeting would magically appear.
For the past couple of years, my private investigation agency operated out of a two-room suite on the second floor of an office building on Santa Monica Boulevard. Business was brisk for a while. I owed it all to the hodgepodge of cultures crammed tightly together in the self-serving caldron of crime commonly known as Hollywood. With less warning than the Andreas Fault gives before she shifts, the steady stream of paying clients quit calling. The influx of cash screeched to a halt, leaving me scouring the streets for anyone who smelled like a paying customer.
Now, my one-bedroom apartment above Zells, a hole-in-the-wall bar and grill on Highland, just north of Hollywood Boulevard, had been home for less than ten days. No one except the owner, Jimmy “Pops” Zells and the bill collectors knew where I lived. I picked up the note again and wondered how this Oliver Kurtz had found me.
By eleven o’clock, the thermometer outside the kitchen window hit 78 degrees. I was tempted to get in my car and head to Santa Monica, but the prospect of feeling the gratifying weight of cash in my pocket or spending the day at the beach wrestled hard with my logic.
I seriously considered the possibility this meeting was someone’s idea of a joke—a wild goose chase with a mysterious man as the prize. Still, I couldn’t think of a soul clever enough to have come up with such an elaborate prank. Bad joke or not, I was ready to risk the scorn for the feel of a few Ben Franklins in my hand.
Rinie Lude is a down-&-out private eye that is in dire financial straits at the moment. So, when she is "chosen" by a retired FBI agent, Oliver Krutz, to simply find and do a "welfare check" on his daughter with a hefty salary to boot, she accepts. Unfortunately, shortly after beginning the assignment, Rhonie finds herself involved in personal threats, a ton of lies (some by her employer), a daughter, Amanda, that doesn't want her help or advice, mob connections and murder. The best advice Rhonie got came from Amanda when she told her, "Nothing is as it seems."
The story is set in the 19960's and Rhonie is an ex-cop now doing a "mans job." She has moved into a small apartment above a local bar/diner ran by "Pops", who ends up playing right into Rhonie's case. After two murders, made to look like suicides, Rhonie is not only investigating on her own, she's fighting against a cop that is more then willing to close the cases as simple suicide. Rhonie won't stop fighting until she learns the truth.
"Shroud of Lies' is a fast-paced who-dunnit that is very entertaining. It is an absolute page-turner. I couldn't put it down. Read it in one setting. Not only is it fast-paced, but it is also an easy-read. There are no "spoiler alerts" here because I want you to read this excellent mystery.
Everything comes to a very detailed, wrapped-up ending. This is my first Marta Stephens novel, but it will most definitely will not be my last. I'm looking forward to reading additional works by her.
'Shroud of Lies' is an excellent who-dunnit book that I highly recommend. I easily give it a 9 out of 10! Wonderful story line. Would love to see a sequel. Check it out. Definite thumbs-up!
Reviewed by dana Owens
12/12/2017
This is my first Marta Stephens book but it certainly won’t be my last. I’m a fast reader and started reading “Shroud of Lies”, around 2pm. Four hours and eleven minutes later, I had finished all 254 pages. I love whodunit books—especially when they are an easy read and a page turner like this one certainly is. From the very first page, I was transported to Los Angeles, California in the ‘60s with the main character of the book, Private Investigator, Rhonie Lude as she accepted a case from a client, a retired FBI agent, Oliver Kurtz who provided her with sketchy details and half-truths at best of the reasons he wanted to hire Rhonie to follow his daughter, Amanda Kinney and report back to him her whereabouts. At first, the case seems as clear-cut and effortless as the down payment Rhonie collects for her labor: $1,000 in Franklins and Grants stuffed in an envelope. But from there the book quickly leads the reader on a fast paced pursuit of the discovery of who Amanda Kinney really is and why Rhonie’s surveillance of her leads to ominous telephone warnings to back off, near scrapes with death and ultimately murder.
Dizzying Ride of a Story that Will Keep You on the Edge of Your Seat!
Marta Stephens book Shroud of Lies is a dizzying read that follows through on its promise that nothing is as it seems. Private detective Rhone Lude, fallen on hard times with bills climbing faster than ivy. She is forced to accept a job from Oliver Kurtz, who, at first, puts her through a cat and mouse rigamarole until he finally gets clear on what he wants from her. Kurtz, former FBI, asks Lude to follow his daughter and with only the barest facts as to why. Lude, desperate for money, accepts with misgivings.
What you can expect from this book set in the 1960’s is cheeky, entertaining dialogue and characters that beguile you as to which classification they belong in - good person or dirty scum. The conversations and Lude’s internal thoughts will crack a smile from even the most anhedonic, diehard gloomy person alive! It doesn't take long, after accepting Kurtz’s job, for Lude to find herself suddenly involved in murder after murder with the cops denying foul play, insisting these murders are suicide, but Lude knows something “ain’t right here” and like a pitbull grabbing on, she won’t let go until she finds the truth. Despite warnings from the cops and others to let it go and walk away, Lude has to know the truth, as deceptive and obscured as it is causing her to put her life in danger and walk a labyrinth of paths which branch into paths least suspected!
The twists and turns in this fast-paced mystery will keep you reading from start to finish because you won’t be able to put the book down. Will Lude come out of this alive? Can she solve the murders? How will she survive the dangers awaiting her? You have to read the book to get these answers. Author Stephens book Shroud of Lies is a best read of the who dunnit detective genre. I was endlessly smitten with the characters, the maze of deceptions, and the surprise ending. This is a book you won’t want to deny yourself!
Shroud of Lies is Marta Stephens’ third novel. An award-winning Indie writer according to her bio, Ms. Stephens introduces her readers to a new private detective, Rhonie Lude, a red-head private investigator, who inhabits Southern California. It took me less than the first chapter to realize that Stephens’ writing is a direct descendant of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett, although with a distaff twist. When I pulled this book from the Author’s Den library, the short blurb about it caused me to think this was a modern-day detective story. However, it’s actually set in the ‘60s, so that Rhonie Lude could be called a first-generation descendant of Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe. Also, given the ‘60s, is her last name a play on the popular mind-altering drug of that era, Quaalude?
When we meet Rhonie, she is a twenty-six year old, former patrol officer now turned private investigator. (Rhonie’s status as “former cop” deals with a harrowing and heart-wrenching scenario which I will let Stephens tell you about in the novel.) She is also down on her luck, living above a bar-and-grill, barely scraping by because she has not had a paying client in some time. (Shades of Sam Spade?!) Her landlord, Jimmy “Pops” Zell, plays a key role in this mystery as the reader will find out.
Rhonie is the child of divorced parents, her father a former newspaper reporter, her mother a serial dater of one bad man after another; both parents are now deceased. Her youth left her with bitter memories. Rhonie was close to her dad and her stepmother, Evy, who is barely surviving now in a nursing home, the victim of early-onset dementia, but who in her moments of lucidity imparts important pieces of advice to Rhonie about both life and, as it turns out, her new case. Rhonie may have a touch of a drinking problem? But she doesn’t drink on the job and only because of the job. She has no friends. She references a three-month affair with a man named Paul that took place evidently some time ago, but Paul died, an early casualty of the war in Vietnam.
The story begins with Rhonie being summoned to take a job that she doesn’t feel good about doing, but financial necessity urges her to accept. Her client is Oliver Kurtz. Kurtz, a 50ish, retired-due-to-injury FBI agent, has lost mobility of his legs and must use a wheelchair. He is an overbearing, used to being in charge kind of guy. He offers her $1,000 up front and the same amount upon successful completion of the mission (about $8,000 in today’s money – more than enough to pay her delinquent rent and bills, and way more, as Rhonie points out, than necessary for a simple surveillance job) to “find the daughter and report back.” Stephens’ hard-boiled language is on display here, and throughout the novel, when Lude, who narrates the story in the first person, notes that the case “promised to be as exciting as a scab forming on a cut.”
However, anyone named Kurtz in a novel automatically harkens for me Joseph Conrad and I’m immediately on the alert that this man may have his own heart of darkness.
Kurtz wants Lude to find Kurtz’ twenty-five year old “missing” daughter, Amanda, who dislikes him apparently as much as Lude disliked her own mother. Amanda was married at nineteen, divorced at twenty-one, a young woman with an exceptional joie-dè-vivre and irreconcilable ability to not only disengage from her father but go out of her way to embarrass him, such as the time she crashed a party he had for friends wearing nothing but her birthday suit to go skinny-dipping in his pool.
Here was a gnarly question I posited early on: Why does a former FBI agent hire a down-on-her-luck PI when he must have a myriad of contacts with law-enforcement personnel?
Then the simple assignment of finding Amanda, which proves rather easy, gets more dangerous and complicated when some unknown person tries to ram Rhonie’s Karmann Ghia off the road. (Gotta love that Karmann Ghia; anybody beside me remember that car?)
Amanda’s last job was a secretary at a famous criminal defense law firm whose senior partner is a known womanizer. Oliver is concerned his daughter is having an affair with a married man, Michael Warren, senior partner at Warren & Gates, who may or may not have been having an affair with Amanda and who may or may not have wanted to break it off and bury the evidence of it so his wife wouldn’t sue for divorce. Or perhaps Amanda was playing a different game at Warren & Gates, involving confidential client files. But perhaps Kurtz, like so many others in the novel, has a different agenda than he originally tells Rhonie, perhaps involving the Las Vegas mob. Further complicating the story, Amanda may or may not have been also having an affair with Mr. Gates, perhaps involved in some sort of unseemly love triangle with these two power lawyers.
Kurtz tells Amanda she’ll need help from the LAPD, and specifically suggests she see homicide detective Joe Palermo, to whom Rhonie is alternately attracted and repulsed by. Palermo’s partner slash boss, Jack Stone, is another interesting character who in polar opposite fashion to Palermo, first repulses then attracts, in a different way, Rhonie.
Soon, Rhonie does track Amanda down and finds Amanda wants none of Rhonie’s help or advice. Amanda tells Rhonie, “Nothing is what it seems. You’ll do well to remember that.”
The next day, Mr. Gates is found dead of an apparent suicide, and sadly, Amanda is found in the same state the day after. The role of Amanda’s perhaps infatuated neighbor, Frank Conn, is also purposefully elusive from the start.
Accusations of who did what to whom, or didn’t, fly and Rhonie must sort out the who, what, how and why. When Palermo wants to close Amanda’s death as a suicide, Rhonie isn’t so sure. She is sharp, determined and even obsessed with unraveling this mystery. She owns the sort of obsession that only an astute female detective would make, such as the fact that the recently deceased stylish Amanda would never have been caught dead (pun intended) in a frumpy nightshirt.
Rhonie acknowledges the difficulty of being a PI in 1962, with the added burden of being a woman. She knew deep down not to expect any real help from the police detectives: “I’m a woman doing a man’s job and that’s threat enough.”
Stephens’ use of sharp, short descriptions harkens back to detective noir novels of the past. Here’s an example: “In fatter days my exit from this situation would have been swift. I still had my pride, but honor and self-respect weren’t paying the bills,” heroine Lude states at the outset of the novel when she agrees to meet Kurtz because she is practically penniless. Here are some other examples: “Funny how a man’s come-on-baby look can switch off the moment you tug on his balls.” “Lies rolled off my tongue like a set of Bob Dylan lyrics.” Jack Stone talking to Rhonie: “Certainly explains a thing or two.”
“Like?”
“The way you handle yourself. You go after what you want.”
“What I mean to say is that it’s not safe to work the streets without a partner.”
“What you’re really saying is without a man.”
Stephens does do a great job juxtaposing the differences between being a PI and a police detective, their differing motivations and job duties. When the Gates of Warren & Gates is found, shot to death in his own car, an apparent suicide, but probably not, Rhonie’s job, and hope, is that whoever killed him, it wasn’t Amanda. Finding who did kill him wasn’t in her job description.
A few minor miffs to report. Stephens occasionally lapses into straight narration, as for example in Chapter Two when Oliver Kurtz straight out tells Rhonie’s backstory in a telephone conversation with Rhonie. I spotted at least six typos; Stephens and her editor could have done a better editing job. One of the homicide detectives asks her, “How are you connecting the dots?” a perhaps 21st century anachronism not used in the early ‘60s.
How does Shroud of Lies compare to the classics like The Maltese Falcon? Shroud holds its own; it isn’t an instant classic, but it is a well-told story with a compelling anti-heroine who gives the old dogs a run for her money. I have not read Stephens’ other two novels, but based on this one, would certainly be willing to risk a few hours of my time to do so. Rhonie is a fitting heiress to Phillip Marlowe: “Uncovering the truth in people’s lives was often like putting together the pieces of a broken mirror. Each new bit of information reflected a twisted new truth I hadn’t anticipated….” Stephens continuation of the detective noir novel is a welcome addition to the literature.
When Shroud starts, I immediately thought of The Big Sleep, when the old man in a wheelchair is searching for his daughter. Stephens consciously riffed off of that novel, for Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep is even mentioned by name in her novel.
I do recommend Shroud of Lies and give it a 8/10 score.
A. J. Ullman, author of the forthcoming Indie novel, Drifting, Falling — Diary of a Call Girl Suicide, from Moonshine Cove Publishing LLC, debuting October 7, 2017.
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