Too Much Stuff

Reading like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre channeled through Elmore Leonard, Bruns’s fifth outing for James Lessor and Skip Moore (after 2010’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff) sends the two bumbling would-be PIs to the Florida Keys to search for lost gold. Their employer, Mary Trueblood, suspects that a train shipment of gold, then worth $1.2 million and supposedly lost during a 1935 hurricane, was in fact stolen by her great-grandfather, Matthew Kriegel, and hidden in the village of Islamorad. They instead find a smuggling operation and the murdered body of either Todd Markim or Jim Weezle, a previous pair of treasure hunters. Bruns milks humor from Skip’s dawning awareness of his and James’s investigative ineptitude, and from their luck in attracting far more intelligent and resourceful women like Skip’s girlfriend, Emily. Those not looking for tight plotting or suspense will best appreciate this breezy beach read for all seasons. (Dec.)