Main fiction is The Drug Study by James Austin Farrell.

Adam Gauntlet returns to discuss the "87th Precinct" novels of Ed McBain and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.

“Well, I guess we’ve got you by the balls.”

This was Davey’s reply once I had explained my predicament to him, perhaps sounding too desperate and, I imagine, looking troubled. I needed the job. Busboy: proper noun, a job title, I could hardly correlate, etymologically, with working in a pub. Though in spite of my ignorance of this bottom rung métier in the pub/restaurant field of work, and in spite of his candid claim that by taking the job I would be handing him my testicles . . . in spite of Davey’s furnished hard but fair demeanor, that even though determined to assure me he was a decent working class chap like myself it did exactly the opposite – in spite of all that, I was desperate to take the job. The thought occurred to me, as I presented Davey with the bereft look of a man whose circumstances ensured he must keep smiling, that if being a busboy entailed gutting rats in the cellar twelve hours a day, I’d have gladly picked up the scalpel and started there and then.