Deadly Age: A Deacon Bishop Mystery

Private detective Deacon Bishop is feeling his age when he's awakened in the middle of the night by a low-rent hoodlum. But the criminal, Davey Kenyon, has something Bishop wants so bad he can smell it--evidence against the Portello crime family. Before the two can reach a bargain, though, Kenyon is gunned down outside Bishop's apartment and Bishop finds himself in the familiar position of being yanked in front of the police--a position made less comfortable because of Bishop's certainty that some in the police department are very much in the pay of the Portello family.

Bishop arranges a couple of PI jobs for himself looking for missing people--people who seem definitely connected to whatever is going on. He has a hard time believing the evidence he's turning up. Surely even Dominic Portello, the idiot brother in the crime family, wouldn't be stupid enough to get involved with Satanism? Yet that's exactly what Bishop seems to be discovering. Then there's the mystery of the tattoos.

Bishop keeps pushing, looking for something that will allow him to put a permanent end to the Portello family crime wave, but at the back of his mind he's absolutely certain of one thing--finding evidence may be tough, but staying alive long enough for that evidence to be useful is bound to be a whole lot tougher.

Author Michael Paulson creates a wonderful character in Deacon Bishop--a man who's hard-bitten but who, nevertheless, maintains a peculiar sense of honor as he deals with criminals, the police, and rich families gone bad. Bishop is man enough to desire some of the beautiful women who throw themselves his way, but cynical enough to suspect that few of them are motivated by simple desire for his aging body.

If you enjoy the hardboiled action of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillaine's Mike Hammer and Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer, you'll enjoy the Michael Paulson's Deacon Bishop. Fans of hard-boiled mystery fiction (like me) will definitely want to grab DEADLY AGE. It's a page-turning thrill-ride.