Head Case

January 15, 2021
Despite the bullet wound that got him bounced from the Chicago PD because his head was so messed up, private eye Sam Kelson keeps getting cases nearly as off-kilter as he is. Taken to Clement Memorial Hospital after getting shot once again, this time by a car thief, Kelson logs just enough hours in the intensive care unit to befriend Jose Feliciano, an improbably named nurse who suspects foul play in the deaths of Patricia Ruddig, Josh Templeton, and Daryl Vaughn, who entered the unit at different times and circumstances but all left in dubious ways. Is Kelson willing to take a retainer from Jose, who's urged on by his fiancee, Haitian nurse Wendy Thomas, to ask some awkward questions? Kelson, whose neurological disinhibition makes it ridiculously easy for him to ask awkward questions but impossible for him to lie when he's asked questions himself, agrees to poke around, and in no time at all, his conversations with Clement orderly Caroline Difley and head custodian Aleksandar Kovacic get them both fired when someone rats them out to hospital security head Richard Jacobson, whose father, Dr. Jeremy Jacobson, just happens to be chief of that troubled ICU. It's pretty obvious where this is going, but Wiley still has several tricks up his sleeve involving the spectacularly dysfunctional Jacobson family, an unlikely romance for Kelson, and a pile of corpses that mounts so high the ICU can't contain them. Through it all, Wiley's loopy detective continues to be the most interesting feature of his adventures.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 1, 2021
The setup is red meat for crime-story lovers. Mending in the hospital after a tussle with a bad guy, PI Sam Kelson is approached by nurse Jos� Feliciano, who warns him: any cracks about his name, and there won't be an extra juice box at lunch. It's never mentioned again. "This place is killing people," Jos� says. Three people died who shouldn't. Would Sam investigate, for a flat fee? Curiosity, plus that fee, has Sam poking about and finding questions, not answers. Why was an ambulance right there when the first patient fell on the street? As the inquiry continues, we get to keep company with obliquely funny Sam, who must, thanks to an earlier wound, always speak the truth. Fortunately, he has Wiley to write his lines, and they are perceptive and graceful. A funeral director's skin "had a luster, as if he buffed it with a soft cloth." The case is resolved in a stunning climax that will leave readers paging back to take in those magical lines one more time.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.