Robert L. Pike - Mute Witness

Jerry eBooks

No copyright 2011 by Jerry eBooks

No rights reserved. All parts of this book may be reproduced in any form and by any means for any purpose without any prior written consent of anyone.

The following custom-made eBook was scanned from my very worn-out, 1965, second edition hardback book of Mute Witness by Robert L. Fish (aka Pike).

I scanned, converted, cleaned-up and re-formatted the original text using ABBYY Finereader and SIGIL to better suit an eBook reader.

I adhered to the authors original punctuation, spelling and sentence structure precisely. Thus, you will find the use of a single dialogue quote () versus the modern double quote (). This is intentional, exactly as the author wrote it in 1963.

Also, in an effort to preserve the authors dialogue and feel of the book, I preserved all grammar and spelling as originally written; which may seem like errors that I missed while creating this eBook. No words or text of the authors original novel have been omitted or altered in anyway.

I test my final epubs on a Nook Color and an iPad2 to ensure the best possible reading experience; however, not all eReaders are the same and dont always display epubs in the same way as others. This is especially true when it comes to the Table of Contents (ToC), images within the epub and the display of the book cover.

If you find errors, or run into any difficulty with this eBook please feel free to contact me through Bolt.

Finally, it is my sincerest wish that you have the best possible reading experience with this eBook.

Flyboy707

November, 2011

T he shot is from the front of a cruising car with Steve McQueen at the wheel; through the rear window we see another car ease menacingly over the crest of one of San Francisco's switchback hills. McQueen's baby blue eyes harden as he glances in the mirror, and what many would argue is the greatest car chase in cinema history has begun.

As I write, it's years since I've seen Bullitt, but that chase is burnt into my memory; it's probably burnt into yours as well. But... what else was there? Robert Vaughan as a smooth villain, Jacqueline Bisset was in there somewhere

The good guys must have won, they always did in those days, but how accurately did the story follow Mute Witness ? It certainly moved the action from New York to the West Coast. It doesn't matter; one was a classic cop movie, the original a fine American cop thriller.

Robert L. Pike concentrates everything into seventy-two hours, no flashbacks, no digressions, no blank time lapses. Clancy is not a superman, just a hard-working, conscientious police lieutenant under pressure. What he doesn't understand worries him. Why should Johnny Rossi suddenly want to turn state evidence? How do so many people know things they shouldn't? When was the washing line empty? (That running joke provides the neat touch that returns everything to normal at the end.)

You can believe in Clancy and the people he deals with. He misses things because he's tired, he makes errors of judgment, he gets frustrated and impatient. But he's a professional who never lets go. Behind what looks like nothing more than a simple witness protection operation is a murder plot, carefully and ruthlessly worked out, and Clancy has to crack it.

Pike (actually Robert L. Fish, who wrote the Schlock Holmes parodies) ingeniously combines the police procedural with elements of the classic mystery. Amid the action, all the clues are there if you can spot them, and Clancy's explanation at the end is as satisfying as a tough crossword clue when someone tells you the answer. It's good to see Mute Witness back in print.

Oh, and that car chase you remember from the film. How did it end? In a fireball at a gas station. People often forget that as well.

Robert Richardson

1994

Robert Richardson's first Augustus Maltravers mystery, The Latimer Mercy, won the Crime Writers' Association's 1985 John Creasey Award for the best debut crime novel. His books have been sold to America, Japan, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Russia, and he was chairman of the CWA from 1993 to 1994.

Friday - 9:10 a.m.

Lieutenant Clancy of the 52nd Precinct dropped from his taxi in Foley Square and started slowly up the broad marble steps of the Criminal Courts Building. He was a slender man in his late forties, a bit above medium height, dressed in a drab blue suit, a cheap white shirt with blue striped tie inexpertly tied, and a dark blue hat that failed to conceal the streaks of gray that were beginning to mark his temple. The thin face beneath the shadow of the worn brim was drawn, lined with weariness; his dark eyes were expressionless.

He paused at the top of the steps, half-tempted to disregard the summons - the office he was about to visit held some rather unpleasant memories for him. And he was tired and he knew it. Six hours' sleep in the past forty-eight, cleaning up a complicated case that would appear in the afternoon papers as 'routine' - and a desk piled high with work awaiting him back at the precinct, plus the fact that his superior was sick and all work fell on him, plus assignment lists to be approved or changed, plus all the constant bickering and fighting and bloodshed that washed across his desk daily in search of possible resolution ... He stared about the green square a moment, watching the pigeons scatter to wheel in the summer morning breeze and the warm sunlight, and then return to peck disinterestedly at the offerings of the children to whom the square was all they knew of the great-outdoors. He was suddenly aware of the pleasantness of the sunlight on his shoulders. This is no day to be here, he suddenly thought. This is no day to listen to Chalmers, no matter what he has to say. This is a day to get your fishing tackle together and go out into the country. Or a day to sleep. Ah, well, he thought; nobody forced you to become a policeman ... He sighed, shrugged his shoulders philosophically, and pushed his way through the heavy doors.

The elevator deposited him easily on the fourth floor of the quiet building and he walked slowly and wearily down the wide, empty corridors, past the alcoved drinking fountains and the pictures of former State Justices hung dustily and unevenly along the high, drab walls, toward the familiar office. He paused briefly outside the frosted glass door, listening to the ragged sound of typing filtering unevenly through. With a shrug he twisted the knob and entered the office.