Stephen Marlowe

Ed here: I've been swapping letters with Stephen Marlowe the last couple days. Looks as if we'll be doing a double book sometime this year containing both VIOLENCE IS MY BUSINESS, not only the best of the Chet Drums but--for me--his best crime novel period--and TURN LEFT AT MURDER which is one of those noirs that always reminds me of a book Jospeh Lewis would have loved to film. A twisty, nasty noir. In the course of our letters I mentioned Peter Rabe and Stephen wrote back saying:


You mention Peter Rabe. He and I met in the late '50s when we both were spending some boozy time trying futilely to save bad marriages in Torremolinos while it was still, mas o menos, an unspoiled fishing village. I was living in a house that Bill McGivern had occupied before me, and Peter in a house a hundred yards or so along the ridge above the village. A copa of wine cost a penny or two in those days and a four-liter jug about a quarter. When that became the reason you were living in Spain, Bill McGivern told me a year or so earlier at his farm in Bucks County, it was time to leave. We were drinking Jack Daniel at the time and there was a you-don't-have-to-believe-this look in his eye. (NB. The good folks at Jack Daniel used to send me an occasional case because it was Chet Drum's favorite drink.)