The Big Man's Daughter

Gordon McAlpine (writing here as Owen Fitzstephen) is one of our foremost practitioners of literary mystery. Descended from the line of ingenious inventors like Borges, his work penetrates and explores the history of books and storytelling... McAlpine brings a powerful new light to a classic noir story.--CrimeReads (Top 10 Noir Novels of 2020) Lies, cons, shifting alliances, kidnapping, and death propel readers toward a strangely hypnotic climax, which is skillfully presaged yet still an exhilarating surprise. Fans of metafictional mysteries will be enthralled.--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) The structure and plot are both inventive, the ending unexpected... It's sharp, at times LOL funny, and a quick read that takes you into the familiar Californian noir world of the golden age of US crime writing.--Crime Thriller Hound Yet another purely delightful metafictional crime novel with wit, invention and surprising humanity from that master of the improbable Gordon McAlpine writing under his pseudonym. ...Skirting metaphysics and ending with a bittersweet, moving and satisfying ending which will haave you choking or wiping a tear from your eye. Damn wonderful.--Book of the Month, Crimetime.co.uk Wildly inventive, elegantly perplexing and expertly told. Have fun trying to keep up with Owen Fitzstephen's imagination.--Steve Goble, author of the Spider John Mysteries Like the craftiest of Dashiell Hammett's grifters, Owen Fitzstephen plays the long con: baiting readers with a story we think we know before slipping us a Mickey Finn from which we awake unsure of where we are and what is real. The Big Man's Daughter is stunning. Fan's of Hammatt must not miss this multilayered, metaphysical adventure.--Jennifer Kincheloe, author of the Anna Blanc Mysteries Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse is only the first in a hall of playfully refracting mirrors that also reworks motifs from The Maltese Falcon and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Left alone by the death of her racketeer father, Cletus Gaspereaux (Fitzstephen's version of Casper Gutman, repurposed here, like most of the cast, from The Maltese Falcon), and the demise or imprisonment of his unsavory associates, Rita Gaspereaux (Rhea Gutman) has to survive on her own. When her attempt to bury her father quietly in San Francisco backfires in a spectacular way, she's left with no money and no consolation outside the pages of Dorothy G., Kansas, a novel that follows 18-year-old Dorothy Gale, Rita's model and alter ego, around Paris, where her job as a waitress brings her up against private eye Paul Darnell. Desperate, Rita agrees to join forces with Evie LeFabre (Effie Perine), the secretary to Pinkerton operatives Sam Hammett (Sam Spade) and Mike Arnette (Miles Archer), who's plotting to recover the real Maltese Falcon for which the Russian Count Keransky (General Kemidov) substituted the fake at the center of the action in Hammett's novel and Fitzstephen's earlier spinoff, Hammett Unwritten (2013). Although Rita plans to run off with the bankroll Evie's raised to finance her search, Evie and professor Ted Bowman, her cousin and partner, aren't nearly as naive as they seem, and the triple partnership swiftly devolves into a battle of wits. An ebullient mashup/revision/sequel perfect for knowing readers who don't mind (spoiler) missing the Falcon yet again.--Kirkus Reviews To plunge into the fictional worlds of Gordon McAlpine novels is invariably to become entangled in ingenious twists on reality and narrative rarely found elsewhere, even when he's re-imagining characters in worlds parallel to those invented by others, in this case Dashiell Hammett. Just as Hammett made imagined crime feel real, McAlpine makes metafiction mischief suffused with meaning; from the masterful Hammett Unwritten, to the too-wonderful-not-to-mention Woman with a Blue Pencil, and now the mesmerizing The Big Man's Daughter, McAlpine's novels prove as moving as they do dazzling.--New York Journal of Books Damn you, Fitzstephen! You've done it again! It may not be a detective novel, or even a mystery, really, but it's a heady brew all the same; a ballsy, carefully assembled and psychologically sharp read that tears into the guts of what it's like to be young, scared and not sure where you're going. Or where exactly you've been. If you're a Hammett fan, you're going to love this.--The New Thrilling Detective Website