A 1001 Midnights PI Review: FRANK GRUBER – The Buffalo Box.

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Bill Pronzini FRANK GRUBER – The Buffalo Box. PI Simon Lash #2, Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1941. Bantam #50, paperback, 1946. Gruber created three other major series characters (four. actually): book salesman Johnny Fletcher and his pal Sam Cragg, heroes of The French Key and The Hungry Dog (1941), The Mighty Blockhead (1942), The Scarlet Feather (1948), and ten other adventures; private eye Otis Beagle, who stars in a trio of undistinguished mysteries: and Pl Simon Lash, who likewise appears in three novels, The Buffalo Box being the second and best of them. Lash is Gruber’s most memorable sleuth. A bibliophile as well as a private detective, he teams with his friend and bodyguard Eddie Slocum to solve mysteries with at least some bookish element. Here, Lash is hired by an old prospector who has come riding his burro down Hollywood Boulevard and claims to be Lansford Hastings, author of The Emigrant’s Route to Oregon and California, an extremely rare…