The Venus Deal

Beautiful prose and a hopelessly convoluted plot distinguish this prequel to Kuhlken's well-received The Loud Adios of 1991. It's winter of wartime 1942 and San Diego nightclub owner and sleuth Tom Hickey is trailing his missing headliner, the enchanting chanteuse Cynthia Moon. After taking her diary and a drawing of three tattooed figures from her rented room, he locates her embittered father dying in a nursing home and then heads into the Sierra Nevada mountains. There, in a period piece of Twin Peaks -style lunacy, he finds a cult, including Cynthia's acquisitive mother, Venus, living in the Otherworld with the Master, the Bitch, Laurel, and assorted other flawed acolytes, all intending to harm the missing girl, who is on a mission of her own. Hickey's personal odyssey is a subplot that works much better. His lot, embracing a semi-criminal PI partner, pushy wife and daughter poised at the edge of full-fledged Lolitadom, could turn anyone to crime or even to a religion that preaches the superiority of little men in lonely hillside caves and the value of money. Though it is sometimes chaotic, this intriguing novel will have readers looking eagerly for the projected third volume. (Apr.)