This is #2 (of 3 currently) in the series of Baldacci books featuring Aloysius Archer, ex-con and newbie PI. This one starts with Archer (he drops the Aloysius whenever possible) heading west, to California, where he expects to find work as an apprentice PI under the auspices of Willie Dash, a friend of the Texas lawman who nearly arrested Archer for murder back in Poca City where he was serving his parole. But Archer and the lawman became friends and Archer impressed him with his native detective skills, hence the referral to Willie Dash.
Archer’s bus stops in Reno NV where Archer runs into a beautiful dancer and a degenerate wino with some serious gambling debts. But the wino also has a beautiful classic car that he had inherited – a Delahaye convertible (probably pre-WW II as the book is set in 1949 and the car was “vintage” then). Archer has some cash from his adventures in Poca City, so he works out a purchase plan (which quickly becomes moot when the seller is murdered) and he and the dancer, Liberty Callahan, set off together on the road trip to Bay City (and, Liberty hopes, Hollywood eventually) where he finds Dash.
Bay City turns out to be similar to Poca City in that there is a Big Man In Town. Or two in this case – Sawyer Armstrong, the guy who owned most of the town, and Douglas Kemper, a rich guy who owned a piece of the town and was running for mayor. Kemper’s wife, Beth, is Armstrong’s daughter.
Dash takes Archer on as a junior associate because he has a big new client – Douglas Kemper. Kemper is being blackmailed with scurrilous accusations of an affair with Ruby Fraser, a young dancer at Midnight Moods, the local burlesque They interview Ruby and, like Kemper, she denies the affair. But she is murdered the next day, her throat viciously slashed. And Archer is badly beaten by two thugs working for Armstrong. Things go downhill from there and the bodies start piling up. Something bigger than a mayoral race is at the root of this. And Archer and Dash have to figure it out before their bodies are added to the pile.
Baldacci continues to impress me as a writer and a storyteller.
8 out of 10.