Five Shots and a Funeral

The second novel in Fassbender and Pascoe's (By the Balls) neo-noir crime series again features hard-hitting, quick-thinking PI Benjamin Drake. The new book presents five connected stories by fictional author Dashiell Loveless that explore the seamy underside of fictional Testacy City, Nev., where no one is above suspicion. In ""The Silent Ventriloquist,"" Drake finds his client's missing ventriloquist husband only to learn that the missing party is really a faceless wooden dummy that channels the voice of its dead owner. In ""Death Plays a Foul Game,"" Drake, smitten by the mysterious Beth Hrubi, goes undercover to a cockfight to rub elbows with Testacy City's most notorious underworld figures. And in ""Raspberry Jack,"" Drake matches wits with a serial killer who marks his victims' foreheads with a lavender letter. The PI drives a powder-blue 1966 Galaxy 500, wears a Borsalino fedora, drinks Old Grand-Dad and is a sucker for a femme fatale. Dashiell Loveless, the ""author"" of these delightfully slick stories and a pulp artifact himself, exists in an ironic fiction-limbo that pays homage to the writing of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, while Fassbender and Pascoe have a bit of literary fun on their own terms. The b&w cover and interior illustrations by noted comics artist Pope are crisply expressive, and the book's design, compact size and back cover crime scene diagram intentionally recall the pocket paperback mysteries of the 1940s. (May)