Nighttown

September 1, 2018
Junior Bender, everybody's go-to burglar in LA, takes on another job that doesn't smell right--it fairly reeks of talcum powder--and lives to regret it early and often.Eager to finance the kidnapping of his live-in girlfriend Ronnie Bigelow's 2-year-old son, Eric, from her ex, Junior would love to bank the $50,000 he's been offered to steal an antique doll from Horton House, due for demolition following the death of its long-bedridden owner, Daisy Horton, the Witch of Windsor Street. But he doesn't trust his anonymous client, whom he dubs the Bride of Plastic Man. And the job turns out to be anything but routine. Junior can't find the doll anywhere he searches in Horton House. Instead, he runs into Lumia White Antelope, a fellow burglar, who's found the doll but not the treasure that was presumably hidden inside. When Lumia is shot to death by the people waiting to pick her up, Junior vows to track down the client who hired her. That's easier said than done, even for someone as well-connected in the Los Angeles underworld as Junior. Although crooked buddies like fence Stinky Tetweiler and Eaglet, the professional killer who's the sole proprietor of One-Shot Solutions, are more than willing to help if the price is right, Junior's meetings with Lumia's handler, Itsy Winkle, and Hollywood producer Jake Whelan don't amount to much more than a lot of huffing and puffing on both sides, and his most promising lead, a talent agent who can identify the Bride of Plastic Man, evaporates when she's murdered too. Working every angle, including a tip of the deerstalker to Sherlock Holmes, Junior eventually manages to unearth the truth, if not justice or the American way.Highly readable but relatively weightless, as if Hallinan (Fools' River, 2017, etc.) had padded a short story out to novel length by spinning loop after agreeable loop of his hero's woolly asides, reflections, and professional apothegms.

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Starred review from October 1, 2018
Edgar finalist Hallinan’s suspenseful, well-crafted seventh Junior Bender mystery (after 2016’s Fields Where They Lay) finds the L.A. burglar/investigator, who has worked on the wrong side of the law for more than 20 years, desperate for money to help his girlfriend, Ronnie Bigelow. Ronnie’s two-year-old son, Eric, has been taken from her by the boy’s father, “a New Jersey mob doctor,” and Junior needs major funds to pull off his plan to reunite Eric with his mother. In desperation, he agrees to break into a house last occupied by the late Daisy Horton, a nonagenarian known as the “Cruella de Vil of fading Los Angeles gentility,” to retrieve a doll for an unidentified client. Junior comes up empty, as does the rival seeking the same item he encounters in the creepy Horton house. Junior’s lack of success, combined with the murder of the other burglar shortly after she leaves the premises, leads Junior to seek the truth behind his commission and its connection with what he did find—rare first editions, including an autographed copy of Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Hallinan’s top-notch prose and plotting are reminiscent of Lawrence Block and Elmore Leonard. Agent: Bob Mecoy, Bob Mecoy Literary.

November 15, 2018

Junior Bender knows better, but he can't resist the $50,000 offered to retrieve a porcelain doll from an abandoned Los Angeles house, slated for demolition after the death of its reclusive owner. His long CV lists his profession as "property reallocation"; friends call him a burglar. Junior soon meets one of those old friends, who has been dispatched on the same mission. They are both unsuccessful, and she ends up dead. Junior unselfishly dedicates himself to tracking down all the culprits pro bono. There's a passel of characters, all cartoonish: anonymous client Bride of Plastic Man sports an unforgettable orange wig; professional killer Eaglet is the proprietor of One-Shot Solutions; Anime Wong can do no wrong with a name like that. It would seem that Junior likes to read on stakeouts--there are enough literary references for a bibliography. Margaret Millar, William Gaddis, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, and especially Arthur Conan Doyle all get a shout-out. VERDICT This seventh series installment from Hallinan (In Fields Where They Lay), a sort of West Coast Damon Runyon who has been short-listed for about every mystery genre prize, displays his ability to spin the merest gossamer into an engaging, flip, 300-plus-page novel that goes down very smoothly.--Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2018
Junior Bender, a careful and talented thief, doubles as a sleuth with a special clientele: other crooks in need of under-the-table detective work. This time, though, the crook with a problem is Junior himself. It all stems from breaking one of his own rules: never take a job if you're being offered too much money. And $50K for stealing a doll from the abandoned house of a deceased widow is definitely too much money. Naturally, it goes bad, first when Junior finds another thief in the house, also hired to find the doll, and then, when Thief Number Two, who happens to be a friend of Junior's, is killed shortly after exiting the premises. Junior wants to avenge his friend's death and, in the process, find the damn doll. This installment of the unfailingly entertaining series is a bit darker than fans might expect from a Junior caper. Still, while the frenetic action leaves little time for the tomfoolery we love, Junior's musings on everything from silverware to first editions are again a delight, and his band of Holmesian Irregulars continues to steal scenes as effortlessly as Junior lifts a diamond tiara.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)