MEXICO IS FOREVER

Despite the absence of his longtime lover, Samantha, Washington, D.C., shamus Leo Haggerty (A Fistful of Empty, 1991, etc.) remains as active as ever: Here he manages to wring three cases out of one woman. First he's hired to do a background check on Sarabeth Timmons, claimant to a $630,000 estate. No sooner has he proved that she's not really Sarabeth Timmons than Ellen Piersall, the lover who's taken her in, hires him to find out who she really is. No problem there either: She's an LA porn star named Fantasia, nÉe Darla Jean Ferguson. That's news enough for Ellen, who drops both the case and Darla Jean with a yowl. But when an investigator for the DA's office in LA comes blundering into Leo's office with a cock-and-bull story about needing to extradite Dada Jean as an informant who skipped town, Leo goes after Darla Jean himself, hiring himself out to her (hey, who's left?) as the guy who'll shield her from danger while he's figuring out why she was framed in a drug bust and what she might know about a former porn colleague that could make the LA law come after her with guns drawn. Fast, mean, and twisty, with all the usual violence saved for dessert: a perfect case for Leo's manic style.