Pay or Play by Howard Michael Gould

Published by Severn House on December 7, 2021

A drug dealer who mixes the language of the street with erudite references to literature and history takes an interest in the death of a homeless man he regards as his doppelgänger. From his study of literature, he knows that if someone disrespects your doppelgänger, “shit is on.” The dealer coerces Charlie Waldo into investigating the homeless man’s death.

The police assumed that the homeless man’s death was accidental, a conclusion that turns out to be unsupported by the man’s autopsy. Since the man was homeless, the police see no reason to question their initial assumption. Before he died, the victim went to legal aid and rambled something about “a hole under the fire.” As Charlie Waldo investigates the death, several attempts on Waldo’s life convince him that there is more to the death than he understands.

Waldo’s primary investigation, however, involves an attempt to blackmail a television judge, the disrespectful and nasty kind of judge (Judge Judy, Judge Wapner) that television viewers seem to crave. A blackmailer is threatening to expose Judge Ida’s involvement in an apparently accidental death that occurred during a frat initiation 35 years earlier. The blackmailer says the death was a murder. While denying her involvement, Judge Ida wants Waldo to find out if there’s any evidence that might link her to the death. After a long investigation built on false starts, digressions, and an uncomfortable expenditure of carbon emissions, Waldo realizes that he has a doppelgänger of his own. The ending is satisfying in its recognition that not all problems can be solved without giving birth to new and different problems.

Readers who have followed this series will know that Charlie Waldo represents quirkiness on steroids. He was a celebrated police detective until he left the force after blaming himself for an unnecessary death. To atone, he has become obsessed with living responsibly. He comes as near as he can to having a zero carbon footprint. He rides his collapsible bicycle wherever he can. To assure that he does no harm to the planet or its occupants, he allows himself to own only 100 Things at any given time. He won’t eat processed foods or drink beverages that have been packaged. All of that makes Waldo an amusing character, particularly when he needs to decide what Thing he can shed in order to possess, however temporarily, a new Thing. Waldo is also a refreshing change from crime novel protagonists in that he rarely finds it necessary to hit or shoot someone.

Followers of the series will also know that Waldo is locked in a struggle with his girlfriend, Lorena Nascimento, who wants him to work full-time for her detective agency. Lorena drives Waldo crazy by purchasing gadgets, particularly her single-serving coffee maker with its incredibly wasteful pods. The conflict heats up in Pay or Play as Waldo’s interest in solving a murder is at odds with Lorena’s belief that accusing her clients of murder is bad for business. Waldo has no interest in money; Lorena is driven by it. Yet her arguments in favor of earning a living aren’t all bad and she clearly loves Waldo. Whether their oil-and-water relationship has any chance of surviving is a question that will encourage romantic readers to keep returning to the series.

The plot of Pay or Play is intricate without becoming convoluted. Each new development challenges the reader to spot the murderers involved in each of the two deaths. As he did in his earlier Waldo novels, Howard Michael Gould has demonstrated his skill in creating clever mysteries with nontraditional characters. The entertainment value is enhanced by Gould’s characterization of Waldo as a man who knows his behavior is bizarre and that his personality is a bit alienating. His desire for redemption may be a sign of mental illness, but Waldo is such a good person that the world would be a nicer place if we all shared his concern with ethical and responsible behavior. He might be a bit extreme in his rigid adherence to owning no more than 100 Things, but his heart is in the right place. That makes Charlie Waldo one of my favorite modern crime novel protagonists.

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Below the Line by Howard Michael Gould

Published by Dutton on August 13, 2019

When a crime novelist introduces a new series and the first book is entertaining, a reader might wonder whether the success was a fluke. When the second book is just as good or even better, the series will probably go on the reader’s “gotta get the next one” list. That’s where I put the Charlie Waldo series.

Waldo is back in action in this sequel to Last Looks. Waldo is still struggling to live a minimalistic life that emits no carbons, but his relationship with Lorena Nascimento is forcing a tradeoff: in exchange for good sex, he must occasionally share an Uber with her. Lorena’s private investigation firm is struggling, even with the helpful publicity that Waldo has unwillingly generated. To earn a few bucks, Lorena agrees to help a teenage girl named Stevie locate her missing brother while her parents are on vacation. That task proves to be deceptively easy, but the investigation takes an unexpected turn when Stevie goes missing after her high school teacher (with whom she claims to have slept) is murdered. Waldo gets involved only because Stevie is a suspect and he thinks she might be innocent.

Waldo’s sympathy for Stevie is probably undeserved. Stevie is the teenage drama queen from hell. She taunts men with her flirtatious sexuality and tells so many lies that it is challenging to recognize the occasional truth she might utter. Waldo wants to believe her, a fact that Lorena attributes to Waldo being smitten by the provocative teen.

Having been sent on a wild goose chase by Stevie, Lorena soon finds herself chasing another wild goose when she is hired to prove that a woman’s husband is having an affair. That case also takes an unexpected turn. Naturally, the two odd cases are linked. Waldo and Lorena discover the link by the novel’s midway point, but they still have some detecting to do before they will understand why Lorena was twice hired under false pretenses.

More murders are committed —snotty Stevie generally appearing as the number one suspect — before the novel reaches its climax. The plot also involves designer drugs, a soap opera actress whose career has gone south, and sexting between cousins. Poor Waldo, who is the opposite of the typical macho private eye, is beaten repeatedly, mauled by an expensive dog, and tasered. It’s enough to make Waldo wonder whether he was smart to end his self-imposed exile. Doing justice and getting good sex come at a heavy price, at least in Waldo’s life.

The first novel established Waldo as a broken character who has tried to repair his life by owning no more than one hundred things. That characterization added humor to that continues in the second installment as Waldo frets about (for example) whether the sling for his broken arm should count as a new thing.

Waldo’s quirky character and his vulnerable nature makes him likeable, while his iffy relationship with Loretta illustrates difficulties that are common in relationships. At one point Waldo realizes he had “taken the depth of her investment for granted, luxuriating in his own doubts without a thought that all this time she had been harboring her own.” He understands that he isn’t the man Loretta expected him to be, but by the end, he wonders whether Loretta is the woman he wants her to be.

Below the Line blends humor and light drama in a smart plot with quirky but realistic characters. Waldo’s agreement to help a drug dealer’s daughter with a school assignment illustrates just how strange his good-hearted life has become, but that’s the kind of scene that makes me look forward to reading the next chapter of his life.

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Last Looks by Howard Michael Gould

Published by Dutton on August 14, 2018

Charlie Waldo is one of the more interesting characters to appear in recent crime fiction. Waldo has adopted a minimalist approach to life. He wants to own no more than one hundred things. That’s instantly amusing because Waldo must struggle with profound questions, such as whether socks count as one thing or two, and what he will need to give up if he acquires a gun.

Waldo maintains a small carbon footprint by living without plumbing and electricity in a tiny dwelling at the edge of the woods on a mountain. He only travels by bicycle or public transportation. Waldo is retired from the LAPD and hasn’t shaved in three years (a razor not making his list of one hundred possessions), but his former girlfriend, Lorena Nascimento, wants him to help her private detective agency on a celebrity case. Waldo used to be something of a celebrity cop and Laura claims that his presence would help her lock down the client. Waldo stopped being a cop, however, when he took advantage of three-strike laws to coerce an incriminating statement that was used to convict an innocent man of murder. Hence Waldo’s sense of guilt, which has exploded into feeling guilty about everything, including existing.

The case Waldo is asked to investigate involves a locked room mystery and a hard-drinking British actor named Pinch who was found inside his locked home with his murdered wife. The police don’t think the case is much of a mystery. A dirty cop, on the other hand, thinks Lorena has stolen something and that Waldo knows where to find it. Those facts drive a subplot, while the main attraction initially involves Waldo’s unwillingness to help Pinch (who is responsible for more carbon emissions in one day than 500 Kenyans in a year) and later (after Waldo relents) focuses on the locked room mystery.

In the tradition of private eye novels, Waldo is beaten up, finds a dead body in his driveway, encounters hostile police officers, is accused of multiple murders, is beaten up again, is locked up, and engages in a chase that ends with another beating. Suffice it to say that Waldo has a series of bad days and questions his decision to come down from his mountain to rejoin society, even temporarily. Yet he also finds himself smitten with a woman, something that hasn’t happened in his life for quite a long time. Sadly for Waldo, the woman is involved in the murder mystery, adding another complication to the plot.

The mystery is a good one, involving the interplay of several characters and the kind of scandalous Hollywood behavior that helps gossip websites earn their profits. While the story moves at a decent pace, Howard Michael Gould takes time to develop his characters. The supporting characters are quirky, but none are quirkier than Waldo. Everyone who meets Waldo thinks he is damaged, and of course they are right. But to Waldo, living with strict rules that minimize his ability to harm other people or the planet is a way to repair damage. Perhaps, the story suggests, there are better ways to repair damage, but even by the novel’s end, Waldo remains loveably challenged by life.

The ending suggests that Waldo will have another adventure, which I believe will be published this summer. It took me some time to get around to reading Last Looks, but I will not wait so long to read its sequel.

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