*** Peter Corris: Taking Care of Business, Allen & Unwin, $11.95. Australia’s most famous private eye, Cliff Hardy, returns in eleven expertly crafted short cases concerning white-collar crime, seven from Australian periodicals, the rest new to print.
*** Hailey Lind: Shooting Gallery, Signet, $6.99. San Francisco artist Annie Kincaid, granddaughter of an accomplished forger of paintings, fronts one of the best new series in the Janet Evanovich tradition. The plot, beginning with a sculptor hanging from a tree, is just strong enough to support the humor, ranging from wit to slapstick, and the insights on creating, restoring, and authenticating works of art. But the author should watch the character names. The first few chapters give us Annie, Annette, Agnes, and Anthony, and later we meet both Pete and Pedro.
** Sarah Graves: Trap Door, Bantam, $22. The Home Repair is Homicide series features handywoman Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree, whose monumentally dysfunctional family includes an alcoholic son and a deceased ex-husband who haunts her 19th-century Maine house. The back story gets tiresome; the complex plot is totally goofy; and an unresolved paranormal subplot, presumably to be pursued in the next book, is annoying; but humorous style, interesting characters, household hints, and even some fair-play clueing compensate.
** Steve Brewer: Monkey Man, Intrigue, $24. Albuquerque private eye Bubba Mabry, a non-tough guy along the lines of John Lutz’s Nudger or Parnell Hall’s Stanley Hastings, is seated in a cafe with a zoo employee concerned about a higher than normal incidence of animal deaths when a person in a gorilla suit enters and shoots the prospective client to death. The case doesn’t quite live up to its irresistible opening hook, but much of it is very funny.
The title of The Rex Stout Reader (Carroll & Graf, $16.95) suggests a more varied menu than what is delivered: two pre-World War I magazine serials, Her Forbidden Night (1913) and A Prize for Princes (1914), with an introduction by Otto Penzler. Don’t look for Nero Wolfe or Archie Goodwin, but these early works will intrigue mystery historians and the author’s most devoted fans.
One would think Wilkie Collins’s classic 19th-century mystery novels, The Moonstone and The Woman in White, better suited to the elbowroom of a TV miniseries than single two-hour versions. But the DVD pairing of two Masterpiece Theatre presentations in The Wilkie Collins Set (WGBH Boston, $29.95) offers superb productions of both.
Doorway to Heaven
by Frank T. Wydra
Copyright © 2007 by Frank T. Wydra
Art by Luis Perez
Another so-so day in paradise, dawn just breaking, drizzle clouding the view of the beach, temperature on the south side of eighty, me, feet propped on the rail, catching it all through the lanai, sipping my third cup of black. Fort Myers Beach is like that, day starts out kind of punk and by noon it works its way out of the depression and up toward the manic end of life. The beach is no more than a seven by half-mile strip of sand on the east side of the Gulf, which God put there to keep the natives’ feet dry during high winds. Its real name is Estero Island, but somewhere along the way the real-estate agents figured they could make more money selling sand if they named the place after its big brother on the mainland, some would say swampland. I’m taking this all in, wondering if a few more hours of rays to add to my three-day tan is in the cards, when the cell rings.
“Hey, Matt,” the scratchy voice says, “how ya doin’?”
“Hey, Ov,” I’m back at him, wondering how I got lucky enough to have paradise put on hold, ’cause whenever Ovitz Marker calls, there’s some kind of trouble. Marker is this client of mine in the Detroit area, place I hang when I’m not on the beach. Over the years I’ve done maybe a half-dozen jobs for him, mainly tracking down money that somehow slipped out of his pocket.
“You staying down here, on the beach?” he asks.
Down here? I check the window on the cell and the area is 313, but that doesn’t tell me anything since all the cells are on Roam nowadays.
“Been here a long half-week,” I said. “You too?”
“Hey, December through March every year. Can’t stand the snow anymore. Y’know, get to be a certain age. Anyway, didn’t call to talk weather. You got time we can get together?”
“Something sociable, yeah, I got time, have a drink or two. Otherwise, I’m on vacation. Y’know how it is, Ov, everybody’s got to take a break.”
“Let’s do the drink,” he says, “give us a chance to talk. What say the Beach-A-Doo at five. Catch the sunset.”
“No business,” I say. Ov likes to squeeze free consulting into a drink.
“Whatever,” he says. “See you at five.”
The Beach-A-Doo is every man’s vision of a beach dive. Done up in shrimp and turquoise, the place looks as if it was designed by a pimp. Upstairs is the respectable part: dining room, every seat with a view of the gulf; terrace with a dozen Bimini umbrella tables; bar, long, coppered, with three bikini-topped tenders doing all drinks shaken, not stirred. Upstairs is where the gray-hairs pretend they’re young. But downstairs, where Ov wants to meet, is where the locals hang. Here the bar is open-air so you can catch a whiff of salt and seaweed while you watch young bodies push a volleyball on a sand court. One corner is owned by a steel-drum band playing Carib tunes while most space is filled with picnic tables and benches. In the Beneath, as this level is called by the natives, the tenders and staff are just past legal.
I get there fifteen minutes past and Ov is at the bar chewing with a twenty-something tender, nursing a straight-up martini. Ov is a tad past fifty, but with the extra flab he carries and the hair slicked over his bald spot he could pass for sixty, easy. Little guy, though, decked in khaki shorts showcasing his knobby knees and broomstick legs and a black shirt with neon orange, pink, and green parrots. Ov doesn’t like to draw attention to himself.
Seeing me, he shoulders a wave, then points to the stool next to his. The tender flashes whites and dimples pop to her cheeks. For a minute I toy with parking on the other side and seeing if there’s a snag in the works, but Ov ends that with his motions, saying, “Matt, hey man, thought I’d lost you.” He pats the stool and I sit, telling dimples I’ll take a Jack-rocks.
“So, you’re down here over the cold,” I say, keeping it light. “Got a condo, or what?”
His eyes brighten and he says, “What I wanted to talk to you about. Got it in ’eighty-seven when the market tanked. Guy couldn’t make the payment on his vig, so I took it in trade. Been coming down ever since. Started with maybe a week or two, then said, shit, who needs the cold. Nice place, two bedrooms, tenth floor, on the Gulf, little balcony. Not big, but I like it, all I need.”
I sip the Jack, waiting for him to get to it, and eventually he does. “You hear about the guy who took a dive last month? Did a one-and-a-half from his condo, no water in the pool?”
I hadn’t.
“Next-door to me. Same building, same floor, same view. Guy’s a wheeler on the beach, but weird. Name’s Rhodesia Sam, but everybody calls him Rhodo. Story is he comes out of Africa palming diamonds, starts buying up beach property like it’s all that’s left, mainly vacant lots but some run-down shacks, too. Anything, so long as it’s on the water. Pays top green. We figure he’s fronting for some rollers who are going to do a high-rise.”