Blutgeld, which translates to "Blood Money", is not one of the many novels published in Germany throughout the 60s and early 70s. It was released in 2008. Publisher Blitz-Verlag has reprinted many of the original Black Book Detective stories but also released three original ones. This is the first of the latter.I've located a Google Chrome extension which auto-copies what I've highlighted from the story into Google Translate so I can flip large chunks of the book at a time from German to English. I was skeptical about my chances of being able to follow the story using that method, and it makes for clunky reading on occasion, but a few chapters in, I'm able to keep up just fine.
The "A.S." in "A.S. Jones" on the cover image at right stands for Angelika Schröder. I am not far into the story yet (about a fifth of the way in), but to this point, Mrs. Schröder has it pretty well nailed down. The elements that make the character and his stories enjoyable all appear to be there; his three-person crew, McGrath's suspicious assistance, the secret lab, etc. It would seem that she has included some of the features sometimes found in the German books as well, such as Carol Baldwin's red Volkswagen and Butch's Indian motorcycle.
This came as no surprise after I spotted Nico Mathies' name as editor. Dr. Mathies (I believe that is the correct honorific for him) manages the rather incredible Schwarze Fledermaus website so he knows the character inside and out. He also contributed to the Black Bat Companion book published by what is now Steeger Books back in 2011.
Blitz has also reprinted some of the books from the 60s and I'll probably devour one of them after this one, though I haven't heard many great things about those. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy some Blood Money.
