Saratoga Payback

January 2, 2017
Senior citizen Charlie Bradshaw, last seen in 1998’s Saratoga Strongbox, knows the last thing he should be doing is nosing around a homicide investigation, having been stripped of his PI license and gun permit largely through lobbying by the Saratoga, N.Y., police department he once worked for. But it’s tough not to when the victim, inveterate scammer Mickey Martin, is an acquaintance, whose corpse Charlie discovers dumped on the sidewalk in front of his house at the outset of Dobyns’s entertaining 11th series outing. Charlie starts making discreet inquiries, but, when he practically stumbles across a second body, he’s off to the races. Though the department’s working theory of the case regards the murders as somehow connected to a gruesome series of horse-nappings, Charlie suspects a darker, deadlier plot rooted back in the time both victims spent in prison. With a lively pace and plenty of quirky characters (including Charlie’s finagler buddy, Victor Plotz), this entry makes the case that this sleuth definitely shouldn’t be put out to pasture. Agent: Phyllis Westberg, Harold Ober Associates.

January 15, 2017
Shorn of the PI license and handgun permit that saw him through 10 variously loopy cases (Saratoga Strongbox, 1998, etc.), Charlie Bradshaw, whose business card now simply reads "Consultant," fights to get a piece of the action after he stumbles over a corpse outside his house.There's no evidence that small-potatoes insurance/real estate broker Mickey Martin was on his way to see Charlie when his throat was slashed and his tongue cut off, but it does make Charlie wonder. Especially after the remarkably similar murder of bartender Dave Parlucci leads to the discovery of a set of homemade dolls with X's marking their throats, one of which seems to be wearing Charlie's signature porkpie hat, Charlie wants to know what exactly Mickey was up to and what connection it might have had with a series of horsenappings that strike close to home when retired Long Island contractor Fletcher Campbell's horse, Bengal Lancer, is stolen and he's sent photographs of other horses' severed heads displayed with more audacity than good taste. Hired to hand over $100,000 ransom to the horse thieves, Charlie faithfully discharges his responsibility without ever crossing the forbidden line into acting once more as a licensed private investigator. But his exemplary behavior earns him no credit with either Campbell or Lt. Frank Hutchins, who continues to stonewall his request for a new gun permit. If Charlie's going to protect his wife, Janey, her 16-year-old daughter, Emma, or Artemis, the retired equestrienne whose effigy also marks her for death, he'll have to rely on the highly questionable skills and ethics of his old pal Victor Plotz and on his own ability to tell some pretty serious lies. Good luck with that. Fans who come for the tangled, forgettable mystery will stay for the hero. The man's most mundane problems continue to be way more interesting than the criminal intrigues in which Dobyns (Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?, 2015, etc.) entangles him.

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February 1, 2017

Now that Charlie Bradshaw is a regular Saratoga civilian--the cops revoked his PI license--life is a little boring. But trouble won't leave this senior citizen (not seen since 1998's Saratoga Strongbox) alone, and in Dobyns's 11th series installment, it literally turns up on Bradshaw's front lawn in the form of a dead man, who is none other than Saratoga's most annoying resident. Charlie's crime-solving instincts run deep and even without the proper license, he starts poking around in the murder investigation.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2017
When Dobyns returned to crime fiction in 2015 with the caterwauling stand-alone thriller Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?, there seemed reason to hope that he might also resurrect his much-loved Charlie Bradshaw series. And so he has, with this eleventh entry (but first since 1988) in the Saratoga Springsset series starring sometime PI Bradshaw and his comfort-loving cohort, the irrepressible Victor Plotz. Charlie and Vic have spent the last 19 years easing their way into senior citizenship, Charlie with marriage and the responsibilities of a precocious teen stepdaughter; Vic, as always, reveling in the all-consuming embrace of his zaftig sweetheart, the Queen of Softness. Now, though, the ordinariness of Charlie's life has been disturbed. First, a horse breeder has asked Charlie to deliver $100,000 to the kidnappers who took the breeder's prize Thoroughbred. On top of that, several of Saratoga's most disagreeable residents have been turning up dead, all after expressing a desire to talk to Charlie. Naturally, Charlie wants to know why, but the grumpy police chief who revoked Charlie's PI license objects. That won't stop Charlie, of course, who just likes poking around. With Vic shuffling along behind, delivering perfectly timed comic accents, much to Charlie's annoyance ( You're the one who kids; I'm the one who endures, Charlie says), this unlikely pair, both suffering from the aging phenomenon Vic calls the dwindles, poke around through some 350 laid-back, sinfully entertaining pages. The world seems a brighter place now that Charlie and Vic have rejoined it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)