Maleeny’s second Cape Weathers mystery (after Stealing the Dragon
) engages the reader without insisting that it be taken too seriously. While others have viciously lampooned the movie industry, Maleeny finds some new aspects to skewer when movie producer Grace Calloway hires reporter-turned-PI Weathers to probe the alleged suicide of Tom Abrahams, her high-powered Hollywood colleague. Soon Russian gangsters are calling on Weathers in his office, and he winds up with a gunshot wound in his side. Aided by the beautiful and deadly Sally Mei, Weathers finds evidence that the motive for Abrahams’s murder may be connected with creative accounting. The snappy writing and a parallel plot of drug-dealing Italian and Chinese mobsters keeps the pace lively and will resonate with Elmore Leonard fans. (Oct.)
