cover image Easy Way Down

Easy Way Down

Irving Weinman. Fawcett Books, $16.95 (261pp) ISBN 978-0-449-90446-6

NYPD inspector Lenny Schwartz ( Tailor's Dummy ) is back to delight old fans and acquire new ones, who should come equipped with a taste for ruminative internal wisecracks. Now 42, Lenny hies down to Miami to confront drug kingpin Roberto Cruz, who, he fears, has a contract out on him, although, as it turns out, Cruz is actually a reluctant admirer of the New York cop. While in Florida, Lenny undertakes a private investigation for his honorary ``Aunt'' Rose whose cousin Abe has been murdered. Probing Abe's death, Lenny meets a gaudy cast of characters: vulgar Stanley Ziegler, Cruz's dumb brother-in-law Jaime, a vain philanthropist and his crooked lawyer/son, and a pair of redneck desperado brothers. He also encounters his Miami police liaison, a beautiful woman with a penchant for S & M, to which he succumbs. The lethal action is undercut by Lenny's cutesy pensees, as when he recognizes ``his need to be the mensch of La Mancha,'' and Weinman's tendency to portray sometimes psychopathic criminals as buffoons. Nevertheless, this lite reading does go down easy. (Jan.)