Boca Daze

Set in Boca Raton, Fla., in 2006, Forman’s amusing third mystery featuring retired Boston cop Eddie Perlmutter (after 2010’s Boca Mournings) finds the 61-year-old bantam weight PI, dubbed “the Boca Knight,” tackling the local “pill mills,” which inappropriately supply people with powerful narcotics. Eddie also looks into the beating of a homeless man called Weary Willie as well as a financial fraud case involving an investment company head, B.I. Grover, who Eddie’s business partner, Lou Dewey, a reformed computer fraudster, suspects is running a Ponzi scheme. (While researching Grover, Lou comes across another name, Bernard Madoff, but Eddie says, “Forget Madoff for now.”) When a confrontation with gun-toting hoods leaves innocents dead, Eddie gets some unexpected help from gang leader Mad Dog Walken and a spunky homeless woman known as Three Bag Bailey. Readers will want to see plenty more of Eddie, who’s as adept with his wits as with his fists. (Dec.)