Last Puffs

“I thrive on private eye stories, so Harley Mazuk new book was a great discovery for me. I’ve put him at the top of my reading list.”
- H.L. Osterman, Short Changed

During the Spanish Civil War Frank Swiver and his college pal, Max Rabinowitz, both fall in love with Amanda Zingaro, but she and her father are shot by a local fascist strongman. Eleven years later in San Francisco in 1949, Frank, traumatized by the violence in Spain, has become a pacifist and makes a marginal living as a private eye. He is called into a murder that the cops hope to write off as suicide. Max, who lost an eye in Spain but owes his life to Frank, becomes a public defender and calls Frank in to help him build a defense for a Mexican accused of knifing a naked man in a hotel room. More puzzling, Max has met a woman in the case who is a dead ringer for Amanda, the woman they thought they'd lost years ago in Spain. What’s going on?

Harley Mazuk was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned a B.A. in English Literature from Hiram College, and studied at Elphinstone College, Bombay, India. He worked in the music business in New York, then joined the Federal Government, for a 29-year run, first in Information Technology, later as a writer and editor in corporate communications. Retired now, Mr. Mazuk likes to write pulp fiction, mainly private eye stories, several of which have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.