Crossover of the Week

1977

SEPARATE CASES

            Investigating the death of his fellow P.I. Andy McWilliams at Andy’s wife Caroline’s request, Miles Jacoby reads his files, and finds that Andy referred several cases to other detectives, including Jacoby’s friend Henry Po, who usually investigates cases involving thoroughbred horse racing, and a man named Malone, who took a case in New Jersey. After Andy’s death, Caroline took over his agency, and referred another case to a man Jacoby knows in Brooklyn, Nick Delvecchio. Jacoby discusses what to do with a murdered friend’s saloon with another friend, Sal Carlucci, an ex-cop P.I. who runs a saloon in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Jacoby also refers to a Boston P.I. who tends to push and prod until the guilty party comes after him rather than try to find some definitive evidence.

            Novel by Miles Jacoby, edited by Robert J. Randisi. Henry Po and Nick Delvecchio are each the subject of other detective series by Randisi. The New Jersey P.I. named Malone is Ryder Malone, who appears in the novels Jersey Tomatoes and Hot Tickets, both written by Shane Stevens under the pen name J.W. Rider. Sal Carlucci first appeared in Ed Gorman’s novel The Night Remembers. The main character of The Night Remembers, apartment house manager and sometimes P.I. Jack Walsh, first appeared in Gorman’s short story “Friends.” Carlucci is also one of the protagonists of The Black Moon, a round robin novel whose authors include Gorman and Randisi, in which Sal at one point calls Jacoby seeking a recommendation for a detective in Lake Superior, Michigan. The Boston P.I. is Robert B. Parker’s Spenser.