Kiss Me Once: More Ta

First novelist Maxwell seems passionate and serious about his craft. But this homage to the tough-guy films of the 1930s and 1940s, complete with suggestions for actors to play the characters, does not come at all close to the tight, sharp styles of Hammett, Chandler and modern writer Elmore Leonard. Lew Cassidy, a pro football player whose career is ended by an injury, pals with the wrong peoplehis schoolboy chum Terry Leary, now a cop on the take, and gangster Max Baumanand their enemies try to convince him to betray them. Meanwhile Lew is drawn dangerously close to the gangster's moll. The period touches are frequently just the dropping of famous namesthere's a weird conspiracy involving D.A. Thomas Dewey and Mafioso Lucky Luciano, and embarrassingly familiar dinner conversation with Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Despite some suspense, and some butchery, the plot has no true, focus and the bloody ending is not worth the wait. (October 2)