Ringer

At the outset of Wiprud's rollicking sequel to Feelers, former Brooklyn house cleaner and endearing womanizer Morty Martinez%E2%80%94now independently wealthy and living in Baja California%E2%80%94agrees to travel to New York City on Fr. Gomez Entropica's behalf to persuade 65-year-old billionaire Robert Tyson Grant, who possesses a holy relic, a gold ring once worn by a legendary conquistador, to return the sacred item to its rightful place in a La Paz orphanage. The priest is confident Grant will oblige. Once in New York, Martinez becomes entangled in numerous murder plots involving Grant, his conniving mistress, his party girl stepdaughter, an opportunistic fortune-teller, and a bumbling assassin obsessed with decapitation. Told from Martinez's jail cell the night before he's to be executed, this relentlessly amusing novel is powered by a cast of decidedly quirky characters and its idiosyncratic narrator's frequent digressions (like his defense of breast implants). Fans of the comic crime fiction of Donald E. Westlake and Charles Willeford will find a lot to like. (July)