Shotgun Alley

As a reader of his own works, Klavan is not bad. This latest in the Bishop-Weiss private eye partnership series has a double plot. Bishop, the rogue, must infiltrate a motorcycle gang to retrieve the daughter of a politically ambitious mogul. Weiss, more laid-back, is asked by a feminist to find out who's been sending her racy but literate email. Nothing turns out as expected. Klavan gives each story an even reading, expertly setting scenes with his pen and then bringing them out with his voice. Whether it's a meeting of self-important graduate students or the carnage of a robbery gone wrong, you are THERE. Occasionally, there are first-person segments from a neophyte investigator; these might have been done in an individual style by a professional actor. On the whole, however, if you like your mysteries rough around the edges, this will satisfy you. J.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

Starred review from September 27, 2004
Scott Weiss is a middle-aged PI based in San Francisco, an ex-cop with a basset hound's face, a romantic's soul and an empath's ability to read others. Jim Bishop is a young, handsome live wire with a taste for violence, drugs and loose women. Bishop works for Weiss, and the interplay between them is only one reason of many to read this memorable thriller from Klavan (Hunting Down Amanda
, etc.). Last (and first) seen in last year's Dynamite Road
, Weiss and Bishop here tackle separate cases, with Bishop taking the foreground as he is hired by a millionaire with political ambitions to retrieve the man's teenage daughter, Holly. She has shucked daddy for Cobra, head of a homicidal outlaw biker gang—and the only way to retrieve her is to seduce her. Meanwhile, Weiss takes on the case of an arch-feminist professor at Berkeley who hires him to track down the anonymous man who, she says, has been harassing her with erotic e-mails. Both cases hold major surprises that spin the narrative around. That narrative itself is a surprise, because although most of it is in the third person, Klavan breaks into it from time to time in his own first person, claiming in a foreword that the story is true and based on his early years working for a PI firm. In any case, the story is emotionally true: Klavan's understanding of the human heart and how it can be torn or salved by eros is uncanny. There's sharp action throughout and the interplay between Bishop's wildness and Weiss's moral gravity is a wonder. The book's only flaws are the jarring first-person intrusions, but they're bumps in a joy ride that's as exciting and real as any this year in thrillerdom. Agent, Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media.