INVASION OF PRIVACY

Russian ÇmigrÇ Olga Evorova's high-powered job in a Boston bank gives her plenty of access to databases, but she still can't find out anything about her closemouthed boyfriend Andrew Dees. So she hires John Francis Cuddy to look into his bona fides; Cuddy concocts a cover story that'll allow him to interview the neighbors at Dees's Plymouth Willows condo; and things promptly spin unbelievably out of control. The first indication that anything's wrong comes when the photo Cuddy slips his Mafia buddy Primo Zuppone rings a bell with a Milwaukee family whose bookkeeper sold out their patriarch to the feds and took a powder. Now a pair of strong-arms who've flown all the way to Boston are convinced Cuddy can help them find the rat, and while Cuddy's stalling for time, his lame story to them—hey, the guy's disappeared on me—comes true: Dees has vanished, this time along with Cuddy's client. How to find them and avoid turning them over to the aggrieved mobsters idling in Cuddy's driveway? The answer, Cuddy figures, must lie with the neighbors he's been quizzing; there's definitely something funny there. But Healy's 11th (Rescue, 1995, etc.) leads you through the mazes of Plymouth Willows so expertly that you'll be left shaking your head at how thoroughly you were had. Healy's best book in years—and a dazzling demonstration of how much life is left in the old p.i. formula when it's used with a master's conviction.