96 Tears

Jack Flippo is back--which will be good news to fans of the Dallas-based PI and all those who like their crime fiction slathered in broad comedy. As in Big Town and Dreamboat, the first two Flippo books, Swanson works in the same spirit as Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. Everybody is trying to out-grift or, failing that, out-muscle everyone else. Flippo is summoned by Sherri Plunkett, a tacky but rich recent widow now married to her former poolboy, to find out who, if anybody, is stalking her daughter. But that daughter, the jiggly co-star of a cheesy syndicated TV show about a PI, is not nearly as vulnerable as she seems. Flippo rolls with the plot punches while regarding the nuts around him with an almost benign curiosity, as if he were at the zoo--except when physically threatened. The two goombahs who most often menace Flippo communicate in side-splitting thugspeak and provide most of the twisted Mutt-and-Jeff funnies: Teddy Tunstra II, aka Teddy Deuce, is as obsessed with hygiene as he is exuberantly violent; his partner, Fred Mertts (yes, like Lucy Ricardo's neighbor), is dumber than he is big--and he weighs 350 pounds. Although his plotting may be thin, Swanson proves that the spectacle of really stupid people trying to live by their wits makes for highly entertaining, hyperbolic comedy. (Nov.)