ONE O’CLOCK JUMP

Back in Kansas City in the years just before WWII, Dorie Lennox is a fledgling p.i. who talks tough and takes no guff. Certainly not from greasy hoods like Georgie Terraciano, or smoothies like Dutch Vanvleet, who lives in a mansion and wears velvet-collared smoking jackets, but is still a cheap unscrupulous lawyer. Still, clients are clients, Dorie’s boss Amos Haddam reminds her, and in trying times you don’t turn them away. Hired by Terraciano and Vanvleet, Dorie’s been tailing gorgeous Iris Jackson, though no one will tell her exactly why. So it’s not until Iris takes an early morning dive off a Kansas City bridge—the “one o’clock jump”—that Dorie begins to suspect she’s been hired to follow the money. She’s right, of course. And where there’s money and hard guys, there’s bound to be killing. A bartender who knows too much about secrets and lies gets plugged before he can spill. When Amos is arrested for the homicide, Dorie’s suddenly got a plateful. She has to find out who Iris really was, recover bunches of stolen swag, solve the barkeep’s murder in order to get Amos out of the slammer, and conduct her blossoming love affair with Harvey Talbot, ace reporter. And, oh, yes, squeeze in some jitterbugging to Count Basie’s band.

McClendon (Nordic Lights, 1999, etc.) begins a new series inauspiciously. Her leadoff is disjointed and rambling, with more characters than a Russian novel and too little incentive to keep them all straight.