NICE GUYS FINISH DEAD
by David Debin
Who shot gentle environmental activist Linda Selby full of heroine and strung her body from her bedroom ceiling? Hard-headed LAPD Lt. Danno thinks it was her most recent lover, fossilized 60's radical Albie Marx—so Albie joins forces with Linda's long-unacknowledged daughter Mariah to find out the truth. A sheaf of stolen papers in a Hollywood postbox leads the two to your basic government conspiracy to invade the Caribbean island of Libertad and harvest their crop of salvia plants to synthesize into NICE, a heavy narcotic that makes its users think, hey, everything's okay, no problem. Can jogging, tequila- chugging Albie and his buddies (his editor Shrike at Up Yours, innocuous NICE inventor Felix St. John, and an unlikely bevy of lovelies) make the crucial connections in visionary retired singer Ahmet Ludi's Libertad paradise to name Linda's killer in time to head off pursuing Danno, the CIA, and the President's chief of staff? Hey, no problem. If you've been waiting 30 years for a gonzo detective story, here it is—a first novel with a series waiting in the wings.