A Death on 66: A Taggart Roper Mystery

Aspiring novelist and sometime investigator Taggart Roper, seen before in The Next Victim , finds out that it's not the mob that's been threatening the owner of the Flying Tiger Club, former jazz great, one-armed Hondo Loomis. The question of who is responsible looms more important after the body of a cheap ex-con is found in the dumpster behind the club, located on the ``ghost road'' of Route 66 near Tulsa, Okla. Next, Roper learns that the dead man boasted of stashing a significant amount of cash near the Flying Tiger, which sports on its roof a vintage WW II Curtiss P-40, its nose painted to resemble a shark's jaw. The local crime boss, an unsavory Tulsa police officer, a teenaged arsonist and representatives of various unidentified government agencies figure in the action that leads to a nighttime shootout at a salvage yard. The novel's hard-boiled tone is softened by Roper's romance with newspaper reporter Rita Ninekiller, his ongoing attempts to find a publisher and Sanders's deftly deployed sense of humor and irony. (Jan.)