Crime for Christmas

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Set in Indianapolis and featuring a PI who's almost 70, Tierney's ``Deets'' Shanahan series offers characters of depth and sensuality and well-placed swipes of razor-sharp humor. After the body of Senator Holland's wife is fished from a river, unclothed and strangely marked, Deets investigates to protect his friend Harry's soon-to-be son-in-law, the man who found the corpse. The senator, poised for an election campaign, seems distracted by another woman and makes sudden changes in his staff. The dead woman's brother, who enjoys simulated S & M via 900 number while admiring his newly purchased antique rug, seems a possible suspect--even after he's knocked out and awakens tied upside-down from his 16th-floor balcony, wearing only his shorts. The most likely suspect is the dead woman's unlikely friend, an Hispanic middleweight boxer with a big punch and not much of an alibi. Shanahan's mouth and his mind work a lot faster than many of his peers' do; his body too, subject to the attractions of his live-in 44-year-old girlfriend Maureen, is getting more of a workout than it has had in years. Only the somewhat cliched conclusion mars this third entry, after The Steel Web , in a series packed with new angles and delights. (Dec.)

Margaret Flanagan

Dalby has gathered an intriguing assortment of Christmas crimes. Her anthology features selections from 16 British masters of mystery, including Agatha Christie, Ellis Peter, H. R. F. Keating, Edgar Wallace, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Joy and sorrow are ironically juxtaposed in each brief holiday thriller, lending a heightened aura of tension and suspense to the collection as a whole. A Yuletide treasury of mayhem and murder.

Wes Lukowsky

Deets Shanahan is pushing 70 and still working as a private eye, prowling the seamy side of Indianapolis. At the request of a friend's son, Deets is called to the scene of a murder. Before he notifies the police, Deets gets the kid home and seemingly out of the picture. Back at the scene, Deets discovers that the victim was the wife of Senator David Holland, who's fighting off a stiff challenge from an aggressive young Democrat. As Shanahan picks around the edges of the case, he realizes Mrs. Holland's death was not an act of random violence. Motives abound. The stakes are high in politics, and the players determined not to fold. Deets, in his third case, is as cynical, curmudgeonly, and appealing as ever. An entertaining entry in a very humane series.