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Title: A fine alternate ending to his finest work
Review: At the end of The Name of the Game is Death, Dan J Marlowe's finest work, the hard-boiled protagonist Drake who looks like he is going to get away runs into an unexpected police barricade and eventually is captured.When I got that far, it was like finding that the character in the Stark series, also about a hard-boiled protagonist who pulls jobs, had suddenly been run over by a truck that came out of nowhere. I enjoyed Name, but thought he made a mistake effectively killing off Drake the way he did.Well, apparently so did Marlowe, because One Endless Hour pastes tens of pages of dialog from Name right into itself to establish the story line, and then imagines that Drake heals and gets away from the authorities to wreak more havoc, much to the reader's delight.Both books are tensely plotted reflecting many details of daily life in mid-century America. The action is hot and the protagonist knows what he wants and how to get it.Highly recommended.
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