Umbrella Man

In the small but distinct subgenre of the private eye as likable loser, Swanson's Jack Flippo looms large. The first three books in the series (Big Town, Dreamboat and 96 Tears) won awards and attention; this latest entry isn't up to snuff. The former Dallas assistant district attorney and PI is once again holding down a straight job in a respectable law firm, but he quickly messes up and so returns to working as a snoop, for a seedy collection of clients trying to trace a piece of film that may prove there was a second shooter in the JFK assassination. In a moment of self-revelation, Jack muses that ""he knew himself well enough to see he was a guy who had found out plenty and never knew what to do with it. Made money but couldn't save it, got jobs but couldn't hold them.... had pulled stupid, almost suicidal stunts for sex, while driving away every woman, including two wives, who loved him."" The trouble is that this time Jack is the only interesting character in a book peopled with types too familiar from other mysteries: a ritual pair of dumb thugs who are dangerous mostly to themselves; a dying master criminal who breathes attached to an oxygen bottle; a crooked ex-cop who turns nasty. Even Jack's weird artist girlfriend, Lola, seems to have wandered in from Elmore Leonard's pages. The liveliest moments come when Jack plunges into the touristy cesspool spawned by JFK-assassination-mania (a tour in a 1963 Lincoln called the Grassy Knoll Experience, for example). But even these highlights, and Swanson's vaunted talent for capturing the seamy underbelly of Dallas, aren't enough to satisfy the discriminating fan. (July)