Murder Is My Dish — Stephen Marlowe

A kidnapped intellectual and a dead partner take Drum to South America When Andy Dineen tires of the FBI, he jumps ship for Langley and joins the CIA to fight the Cold War in Berlin. After years in the spy game, he grows sick of the paperwork, and is considering his options when an old friend, private detective Chester Drum, offers him a job. Drum is surprised when his old academy classmate takes him up on it, and shocked when it gets Dineen killed. Dineen's first and last case is a stint as a bodyguard for a South American intellectual who's writing an expos of his nation's savage dictator. When the strongman's thugs kidnap the author and bludgeon Dineen, Drum rushes to the hospital just in time to watch his friend die. Avenging Dineen will mean a trip to South America, and infiltrating a palace whose secret police are not half as dangerous as the despot's daughter.