Penance

For Housewright's first Holland Taylor novel, a 1996 Edgar winner, R.C. Bray delivers a perfect raspy-voiced private eye who is dragged into a murder case that the cops really want him to solve since it's a political flytrap. Bray also does a credible job with a host of other characters--cops, lawyers, blackmailers, politicos, and aides. One aide is at first way too brusque-voiced to be bearable, but Bray settles in. Even when the story lapses into lecture mode on the life of a P.I. or Taylor succumbs to his softer romantic side, Bray keeps up the momentum--only losing it a bit, and obscuring some vital clues, when he reads every semicolon and backslash in an Internet report on some suspects. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

September 4, 1995
Murder intrudes on a Minnesota political campaign in this first outing for St. Paul PI Holland Taylor. A former cop, Taylor is suspected of murdering a drunk driver who killed his wife and child four years ago. Hunting the murderer to clear his own name, he latches onto the gubernatorial campaign of Carol Catherine ``C.C.'' Monroe, a telegenic legislator whose rise began shortly after the mysterious hit-and-run death of an opponent. Apparently on the verge of upsetting two veteran politicos, Monroe is vulnerable: she once made an intimate videotape with her boyfriend, and now blackmailers may be after her. When a likable young Monroe campaign worker learns something dangerous and pays with her life, Taylor finds himself on a truly sordid trail. Some impressive tough-guy sass emerges from the narrating Taylor, and Housewright, a former newspaper reporter, has an intriguing, darkly pessimistic take on American politics and media. But long monologues and a weakness for preaching bog the story down and, in the end, Taylor is more narcissistic than interesting.