Peoria Nights – A Slice of 1930s Noir and Gritty Pulp Action

Peoria Nights: From the files of Nick Stihl, Private Investigator

Book review by Mark Slade

This pulp/Noir/ Detective collection of stories feels familiar, but since when is familiar a bad thing? If you are looking for a book featuring a tough, quick-tempered, take-charge hero, then Nick Stihl is your man. Every story is fast-paced pulp fun.

In the 1930s, Peoria, Illinois, was ruled by ruthless gangs with an iron hand. Fighting violence, thievery, graft, corruption, and a whole slew of other crimes, Nick Stihl always punishes the criminals.

The ex-boxer turned Private Investigator  has help from a crew of friends and fellow crime fighters, including his sexy secretary Pepper, Detective Dave Colby  of the Peoria police department and Sam Wilson, Stihl’s best friend, and one the few honest lawyers in the city.

But a former boxer turned private investigator with fists of steel, Private Eye Stihl cleans up the city in a trio of two-fisted adventures.

How to Stihl Rubies:

Jewel thieves from the UK purloin rubies from a jewelry store and Stihl is hot on their trail.

 Their sites have a large cache of rubies. The British couple are in cahoots with the mob, which poses another problem for Stihl.

Wood versus Stihl:

The P.I. searches for a formula that turns wood into steel, and a violent secret organization sets its sights on invading Peoria, Nick Stihl has to stop them.

Let’s Stihl Halloween:

Dr. Lars Svenson, a Millionaire, has an annual costume party that attracts all kinds of odd people, spooks and beauties alike, a woman in a Blue Butterfly sapphire necklace. Stihl attends the party and investigates the theft of the butterfly necklace.

After receiving an invitation to the Halloween party, Stihl enters the bank to make a deposit and men with stocking masks burst in with guns demanding all the money. Of course, Stilh manages with no problems to take them out, with fisticuffs, or via gunplay, just as Detective Colby makes his way inside the bank.

Fun, crazy, hilarious scene.

The stories move swiftly, and Nick Stihl is definitely cut from the same cloth as Mike Hammer and Radio Detectives of the 30s and 40s, such as Richard Diamond.  Shoot first, ask questions later. Chances are what solves the cases for Stihl, not always clues. But he is a proactive Detective. He doesn’t sit around and wait for the suspects that show up.

Wood vs Stihl is the weakest story in the collection. Let’s Stihl Halloween being the strongest story, does struggle with a few one note characters that bogged down the previous entry.

The saving grace of this book is Olson’s enthusiastic storytelling. All the other gripes are forgiven because you’re here for a good time. Which is the reason to read pulp adventures.  It doesn’t matter if the viewpoint of the tales change often. Or that the plots seem ridiculous.

The point of an adventure story is to take you out of dull, mundane, or dreary existence.  And to make you feel better about your life.  It’s what keeps you reading them.

Some writers are plastic, generic, and become predictable. The writing can be sanitized, and auto tuned with many writing apps.

Olson is not one of those writers. He writes with a lot of heart, and instills a lot of grit in his characters.

The ones who have their own sandboxes, and love playing in it, build better worlds. Those worlds, characters, plots, or even dialogues, are not perfect. But perfect is boring. To me, imperfections are beautiful. Dr. Richard A. Olson marches to his own drumbeat.