This is a new take on the traditional private eye tale. Jacob Martin drives a classic 356 Porsche coupe, has a walk-up office in an old, downtown building and receives a call for help from a woman whose daughter has dropped out of sight (a few days later her husband is also missing). If Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlow was a post-modern knight walking the "mean streets" of Los Angeles, this guy is also a rescuer of women who himself needs rescuing. But rescuing from what? That is part of the fun with this genre redux. This is Denver, not LA, and how evil can evil be there?

We are in good hands. Howard Robinson is a polished writer whose dialogue, credible action sequences, intricate back story and mood setting descriptions couldn't be better: "The gas station looked like something out of a magazine ad from the forties. The outer walls were a deep-textured stucco, painted gray, and the old-style bungalow roof extended out like a porch over a pair of gas pumps... Out in front of the station, rusted and peeling, was the traditional emblem of Pegasus: an antique Mobil station."

But who is the rusted Pegasus, "The Last Cold Warrior" of the title? I love a book that gets the reader thinking more as you go along, instead of less. Particularly a thriller. Robinson uses the same deep focus we admire in the work of Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald to pull us further and further into the plot's quicksand until we realize (too late) that we have become the central character and our own salvation depends upon "getting it all straight."

At one point the woman, Muriel, says: "Twenty-five years ago we just knew the world was going to be different, and we were all so totally involved in the process. But then of course nothing really changed at all." We have all been there, but most books, even more consciously literary ones, don't often look back. "The Last Cold Warrior" does.

Great cover, great cast of characters, unpredictable plot and a great read. OK, I admit it, I once owned silver 356 Porsche too. But please tell me there is going to be a whole series of Jacob Martin books. I need someone to rescue me from long winter nights of reruns on TV.