Crossover Cover: Getting Up with Fleas

Devlin “Trace” Tracy is hired by his former employer at an insurance company to protect a freewheeling actor on the set of his latest film. Trace’s office is above Bogie’s Restaurant, which is frequented by mystery writers and other P.I.s; Trace says, “Now, Bogie’s is getting out-of-town trade too. Only about a week before, there was this private detective from Boston who stopped in. He had a quiche cookbook under one arm and he ordered some kind of Yugoslavian beer and got drunk after two sips and then wanted to talk to the bartender about the meaning of courage.” Detectives Ed Razoni and “Tough” Jackson investigate the hit-and-run murder of a man mistaken for the actor due to the star giving him his jacket. The Boston private detective is Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, though Trace is probably exaggerating his behavior somewhat. Murphy wrote a series of novels about Detectives Razoni and Jackson in 1973-1974. Trace first met the duo in Too Old a Cat, which I covered in a previous post.

Crossover Cover: Too Old a Cat

Devlin “Trace” Tracy and his girlfriend Michiko “Chico” Mangini join the New York private investigation agency run by Trace’s dad, ex-cop Patrick “Sarge” Tracy. Sarge’s office is above Bogie’s Restaurant & Bar. A Mafioso who hires Sarge to look into his wife’s involvement with a cult says, “I heard there were some private eyes hung out downstairs in the restaurant.” Sarge replies, “One’s a broken-down pug and the other one’s a one-armed communist.” Detectives William “Tough” Jackson and Ed Razoni investigate the murder of the cult’s guru. The “broken-down pug” is Robert J. Randisi’s private eye Miles Jacoby, while the “one-armed communist” is Michael Collins’ P.I. Dan Fortune. Both detectives hung out at Bogie’s (a real restaurant popular among mystery writers) in their respective series, and ran into each other there in Randisi’s novel The Steinway Collection. Razoni and Jackson were featured in another series of novels by Murphy that were published from 1973-1974.