Anthony Rome's Miami Mayhem

Miami Mayhem, published in 1960, was the first of the Tony Rome PI thrillers written by Marvin H. Albert under the pseudonym Anthony Rome.

Marvin H. Albert wrote huge numbers of crime and spy novels using his own name and several pseudonyms including Anthony Rome and Nick Quarry.

Tony Rome is a PI in Miami. He lives aboard his boat, the Straight Pass. He won it playing craps. He gambles a lot. Mostly he loses. The Straight Pass is the only thing he has to show for all the years he has devoted to gambling.

Tony gets a call from a PI named Turpin. He and Tony used to be partners. Turpin is now house dick at a Miami hotel. He wants Tony to return a girl to her father. Just to drive her home. There’s no real drama. The girl (her name is Diana) is fine, just drunk and passed out. Her father, a seriously rich guy named Klosterman, has reported her missing. It’s an easy two hundred bucks for Tony.

So why has someone torn Tony’s boat, car and office apart looking for something? It has to be something very valuable.

Diana has lost an item of jewellery. It’s a pin in the shape of a daisy. It’s moderately valuable, but not worth enough for someone to go to so much trouble to get hold of. And it doesn’t explain why Turpin has had his brains blown out (we know about this right at the start so this is not a spoiler).

The Klosterman family setup provides endless potential for dramas. Klosterman has an ex-wife. He hates her. Diana’s husband is chasing other women. There’s a sleazy doctor who’s lost his medical licence and he’s mixed up with the family. And there are some secrets.

That missing pin leads Tony to all kinds of discoveries. Valuable jewels do tend to be associated with all manner of shady dealings.

Klosterman is determined above all to avoid scandal. What he wants from Tony is help in covering up any possible scandal. And Klosterman has major political connections. There is a background of corruption involving politicians, cops and powerful men like Klosterman. Justice means nothing. Power is everything. Tony Rome is basically honest but he’s a realist. In a crooked town in a crooked state in a crooked world there’s no point in even daydreaming about justice. The first thing for a PI to worry about is to survive. Then if you’re lucky you worry about collecting your fee. If you’re real lucky maybe you can keep the innocent out of trouble.

Tony Rome is hardbitten and cynical. He just wants to spend his time gambling and fishing. He’s tired of dealing with cops and crooks and junkies and hookers and other assorted lowlifes.

Tony is hard but he’s no thug.

The plot is complex. At times you wonder if there’s any way the author will be able to tie everything together but he does so quite successfully.

It would be a stretch to call this noir fiction but it does have a few noir tinges. It’s a fine hardboiled crime thriller with the right balance of action, mystery and suspense. Highly recommended.

Miami Mayhem was filmed in 1967 with Frank Sinatra as Tony Rome. It’s a movie worth seeing.

Everything Marvin H. Albert wrote is worth reading, including The Gargoyle Conspiracy, the two superb adventure thrillers he wrote as Ian MacAlister, Driscoll’s Diamonds and Valley of the Assassins, and his Nick Quarry crime thrillers The Girl With No Place To Hide and No Chance in Hell.