A Fine and Private Place: A Gil Disbro Mystery - Hardcover

Breezy Cleveland PI Gil Disbro's latest client, frail old Judge Lowell Amerine, has a truly unusual problem. For nine months now he's been paying blackmail to somebody who knows he let his scapegrace nephew Barry Sprague, already in Dutch with gambler Gus Cusimano, bury his lover Megan Latimer (who OD'd on some drugs she shared with Barry) out in the wilds of the judge's backyard. But now he's gotten a demand from a second blackmailer, and enough is enough. Gil goes to work and swiftly discovers that: (1) the first blackmailer, one G.K. Hatton, doesn't exist; (2) Gus and his goons are a lot more intimately involved with Barry than the judge realizes; and (3) Megan is still alive. So far, so good, and when Gil ties all this malfeasance to his old acquaintance Slick Underhill's ingenious con for making big money on a no-name middleweight bout, the pot seems to be bubbling merrily. But then the judge suffers a fatal heart attack; Slick turns up equally dead; Gil figures out who's really buried out back of the judge's place; and you spend the rest of the time keeping track of the bodies (there'll be more) and waiting for the killer's luck to run down. Initially, Gil and the case are as beguiling as last time (And Then You Die, 1992), but once again Martin's resort to wholesale homicide is the sign of his flagging invention. Maybe he ought to stick to one-acts. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This compact narrative, niftily constructed scam-by-scam, is illuminated by the succinct charm of Cleveland PI Gil Disbro, who last shone in And Then You Die . An elderly judge is being blackmailed for allowing his no-good nephew to bury his girlfriend, dead of an overdose, on the grounds of his home nine months earlier. The judge is wealthy and can afford to pay, but when another blackmailer issues demands, the judge calls on Gil. The dead girl shows up alive and kicking (literally: she teaches an aerobics class), and the first blackmailer is unveiled. One scam links the nephew to a mob family; another connects the mob to a fixed boxing match; the fixers are linked to a con man, who has ties to the dead girl who isn't. At about half a dozen moments along the way, Gil has everything figured out, but then revisions are required. In a case ripe with an assortment of svelte and dangerous women, Gil's best girl, Helen, wishes his contacts were uglier. Although a few oddball minor characters, like the mobster's psychotic mother, get short-changed in the abrupt plot shifts, this tight-as-a-drum caper leaves a clear, sharp impression.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.