City of Beads

Tubby Dubonnet, the New Orleans lawyer who made his debut in Crooked Man, is divorced, fond of his city and of good food and always on the lookout for a new romance. What he finds instead is loads of trouble. First his friend, peanut-oil shipper Potter Aucoin, is found floating in his own oil; then Aucoin's foreman is shot in Tubby's building after a visit. Meanwhile, Tubby's collegiate daughter wants his help on behalf of an environmental group that's investigating local companies polluting the Mississippi, and pretty and seemingly docile Tania Thompson shoots a drug dealer she believes killed her brother and winds up running for her life to a bar Tubby is thinking of buying. Then there's the man who runs a local gambling casino who seems to be offering Tubby a sinecure-with his pretty assistant thrown in as a sweetener. Dunbar weaves together the many strands of his highly entertaining tale with much skill and wit, as well as some relaxed local color. The only problem is that Tubby, likable as he is, doesn't seem smart enough to have figured it all out so well. Dunbar is, however, and that's what counts. (Jan.)