HOLY CITY

A private eye tracks down three women, each of whom might be heir to a substantial fortune, in Helms’ mystery.

When Whitlock, a vice detective for the Charleston Police Department, loses a civilian informant, the 40-something quits his job, deciding to work for himself instead of dealing with the bureaucracy and politics of the force. Five years into his lucrative and morally gray new career as a private investigator, Whitlock is asked to find a lost heir to an elderly billionaire, Tucker Donovan. At the behest of his occasional lover, local attorney Dahlia Barba, Whitlock takes the job. It immediately becomes evident that this is not a simple missing person case—the day after he takes the assignment, Whitlock finds his office burgled. When he discovers a link between a recently murdered private investigator and his own case, Whitlock must begin to uncover layers of mysteries with puzzling connections as he determines three possibilities for Donovan’s lost daughter. Before he leaves his job, Whitlock is characterized as a morally questionable detective, not above breaking laws to get a confession. (In fact, he seems to break the law less after becoming a private eye.) Whitlock endearingly embraces his new role, using a cliched stylized eye on his business card, of which he is extremely proud. Helms leans into the noir genre, creating a somewhat misogynistic yet somehow still likable lead in Whitlock (“Compared to her skanked-out rags from the night before, she was radiant, her little red dress about a mile above her knees”). He’s at least self-aware of his stereotypical misogyny, even calling himself a “chauvinist pig” at one point. This misogyny is offset by Whitlock’s mature response to an independent women’s sexuality (his relationship with Barba is sexual without being possessive—both of them have other sexual partners without it being an issue). Helms’ writing is engaging and amusing, artful in its wordplay and dialogue. The mystery is satisfying and leaves room for more intrigue in later installments of the series.

Engaging writing and noir overtones offset some problematic content in this clever detective story.