The first in the Matt Moulton series, “Past Tense” unfolds in misty 1949 San Francisco, where the disillusioned dick finds himself lost in the dark: Caught in a murky, murderous case that brings back memories of his wartime guilt.
He takes on the proverbial client from Hell—a multi millionaire’s spoiled daughter, who’s looking for her independent, long-lost sister, the main heir of the family estate. But it turns out that the case links to the dick’s more mysterious client, a man in search of his memory. Moulton helps the man recover it, but the main revelation, that the guy’s a paid assassin who may have killed the missing woman, now haunts Moulton himself, who still feels shame over his work as an assassin for the Allies in World War II.
Worse, the now grateful hit-man client also claims he works for a full-blown assassination syndicate that involves the city government, the police, and the mob. Its existence raises the prospect that the prying white dick’s beloved black girlfriend—who smuggles information to him from the city detective bureau—may not survive a case that’s already killed eight people and counting.
If there’s an elevator pitch for this chaotic thriller, it would have to say that the elevator is plummeting, and we don’t know whether it will stop before it crashes to the bottom. In depicting the fall, “Past Tense” jolts the classic hardboiled genre with a fresher energy and yet bleaker soul.
“Past Tense” is published by Level Best Books and is currently available for purchase.
