The Paris Deadline

Byrd's standalone blends humor and suspense well. It's Paris, 1926 and Toby Keats, a master tunneler for the US Army during WWI, is now a reporter for the Chicago Tribune; his prosaic existence becomes anything but when he's assigned to help the paper's Queen Mother, Katherine Van Etta Medill McCormick, who routinely used him to run errands for her when visiting Paris. Having paid for two "splendid South American automatic parrots," she's upset to have a dingy mechanical duck delivered to her instead. The duck may be more valuable than it appeared-Keats learns that it may be the legendary Vaucanson's defecating duck reported to have eaten "food with its beak, digested it, and...excreted it." Things ramp up in complexity when an attractive woman, Elsie Short, claims that the duck is hers, and Keats's pursuit of the truth enmeshes him in murder. Fans of The Maltese Falcon open to a funny riff on its plot will be delighted. (Oct.)