I became a fan when the first Junior Bender e-book Crashed, came up on Amazon. If you like your suspense tightly constructed, the dialogue and characters hilarious, then this is a must read new series.

Junior has once again caught the attention of the LAPD, but this time it’s someone who needs his help. It would be odd, except, if you’re a crook and you’ve lost a few gems to a competitor, or a family member to a serial killer you’d turn over a few rocks until you found Junior, too.  Junior may be a burglar, he may be a basket case paranoid, but he’s also a fixer, and LAPD Detective DiGuardio, with whom Junior has had occasion to meet, needs Junior’s special talents and he needs them now. An uncle, another DiGuardio, maybe mobbed up—or not, whose fortune was made in the music industry with his little Elvis lookalikes, may have threatened to kill a sleaze-rag reporter whose body was found early this morning. And as luck would have it, on the only Hollywood star of one of the uncle’s Little Elvises.

Junior is brought up to speed on the rise and fall of the Little Elvises in the music industry from his very smart teenaged daughter, Rina. Junior is a walking dictionary for regrets: his divorce and the fact that he can’t live in the same house as his daughter, that his latest domicile is a dumpy motel called The North Pole run by a chain-smoking, hard liquor drinking cop’s widow who complicates his life by asking him to find her missing daughter, who may or may not be alive at the end of this book.

There’re enough slimy characters in the book to make me want to clean my fingers when I turn the pages, the uncle’s surly helper who looks like an East German guard of indeterminate gender, but then there are characters who redeem my faith in crooks. Yeah, Junior’s a hunk, but I’m in love with Louie-the-Lost. Here’s a guy everyone should have on their team; he’s a crook who shows up when you’re about to be shot by a tranked-up hit-man. And, there’s Ronnie, the dead sleaze bag’s widow, whose natural street smarts and incredible beauty and quirky personality soon win over Junior.

All of the above make for another winner for Tim Hallinan and I personally can’t wait until the next one comes out. More please!

Reviewed by RP Dahlke, August 2011.
www.rpdahlke.com