Jump

March 9, 2009
Former San Francisco homicide detective Sam McGowan sees his plans for a peaceful early retirement go out the window around the same time as his despicable landlord, setting in motion the Rube Goldberg works of this wacky stand-alone from Maleeny, author of 2007's Stealing the Dragon
and two other Cape Weathers investigations. Guilted into unofficial sleuthing by his ex-partner, who's the cop probing the fatal plunge, Sam quickly discovers no dearth of suspects among his quirky neighbors on the 20th floor—and a hotbed of criminal activity. Between the slacker brothers whose sandwich business serves as a distribution network for a Mexican drug lord, the two glamazons putting themselves through school with X-rated activities, a mysterious torch singer and the B-movie director who may be a blackmailer, we're firmly on darkly comic terra Hiaasen. Fast-paced and funny, this is a perfectly blended cocktail of escapism, with or without the beach towel.

April 15, 2009
A homicide cop is lured out of retirement by a homicide close to home.

Ed Lowry, the landlord from hell, plunges to an unlamented death from the 20th floor of his San Francisco apartment building, and suddenly Sam McGowan is a working cop again. Sam's 24-hour retirement certainly isn't what he had in mind when he parted with badge and gun, but life—and murder—can be full of little surprises. Beset by political pressure, Danny Rodriguez, Sam's former SFPD partner, is in serious need of a favor from a friend who also happens to be a tenant. So Sam reluctantly finds himself getting to know his neighbors, just as he would have done if he were still on the job. Or not exactly. Consider his relationship with Jill, the lovely jazz singer. Sam likes her more than he's liked any woman since the death of his beloved Marie, and that makes him nervous. So do the antics of magnificently endowed apartment mates Shayla and Tamara, graduate students, sex kittens and Internet stars. The motley crew Sam gets to know as his investigation deepens have but one thing in common: They all hated their loathsome landlord.

If comedy is hard, comedy plus murder is even harder, and Maleeny (Greasing the Pi˜ata, 2008, etc.) isn't quite there yet.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2009
Cop Sam McGowan has been retired for one day when his landlord takes a dive off the roof of his building. The San Francisco police want to call it a suicide, but all signs point to murder. Sam talks to his neighbors on the top floor and finds that every one of them hated the dead man. Fast-paced, rollicking humor and characters right out of awell, a 1930s Agatha Christie country house mysterymake this one of the best from the award-wining author of the Cape Weathers series ("Stealing the Dragon"). [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 2/1/09.]

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