You wouldn’t think the most ribald movie comic of his age would have a sentimental streak, but Groucho Marx is so sad that Peg McMorrow, a starlet he’d had a brief relationship with two years ago, is dead that he persuades Frank Denby, the former police reporter who’s writing his farcical new radio show, Groucho Marx, Master Detective, to see what he can get on the death. It doesn’t take long for Frank to find that the official verdict—suicide—is a lot of hooey. (Whatever finally killed Peg, she’d been beaten thoroughly first.) It doesn’t take him long to find that the cops are dead serious about burying the case. (A day after Peg’s death, they’ve already closed and vanished the case file, cremated the body, and scattered the ashes at sea.) And it doesn’t take him long to find Jane Danner, the comic-strip artist who’ll hold his hand and trade quips with Groucho while he’s waiting for the trail of blackmail and corruption to lead from blackmailing Peg to organized crime, the Bayside Police Department, and the upper reaches of Monarch Studios. Throughout the starlet-studded proceedings, Groucho is hilarious. Unfortunately, the non sequiturs that pepper his conversation so amusingly seem to have wormed their way into the helter-skelter mystery as well. Historical Hollywood background, celebrity cameos, rapid-fire patter, and ramshackle plotting: Veteran Goulart’s series debut is just the thing for readers who think George Baxt and Stuart Kaminsky aren’t turning out this sort of product fast enough.
Pub Date: April 9, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18106-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
Even when she’s in pantyhose, Hannah’s grit and quick thinking once more save the day.
All of Lake Eden is agog when the police chief’s secretary takes a tumble from the penthouse of a condo complex.
Fabulously wealthy Roger Dalworth has pulled out all the stops for the grand reopening of the Albion Hotel, his new luxury condo project. A caterer from Minneapolis! Red Velvet Surprise Cupcakes from The Cookie Jar for dessert! The evening is so grand that The Cookie Jar’s owner, Hannah Swensen (Cinnamon Roll Murder, 2012, etc.), in eye makeup and pantyhose, decides to tour the Albion’s posh penthouse, complete with its outdoor garden. Hannah is luckier than Barbara Donnelly, whose own tour of the penthouse ends in a headfirst plunge to the parking lot. Barbara survives, much addled, leaving amateur sleuth Hannah to decode her ramblings about her brother (Barbara is an only child) and a furry white monster that lurks in her hospital room. Hannah soon has her own worries. She finds Dr. Bev Thorndike, her former rival for local dentist Norman Rhodes’ affections, in her red Maserati at the bottom of Miller’s Pond. Even though Dr. Bev has recently become engaged to Roger, her death puts Hannah very much on Detective Mike Kingston’s radar screen. Can Hannah find the real culprit before Mike ends the discussion of whether he or Norman will be the one to wrestle her to the altar by putting her in the slammer instead?
Even when she’s in pantyhose, Hannah’s grit and quick thinking once more save the day.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-8034-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Her zany cast will have readers wondering whether DiRico’s series debut is set in Belle View or Bellevue.
Murder crashes the party.
Mia Carina would like nothing better than to see her dad, Ravello, a made man in Donny Boldano’s mob, go straight. When she hears he’s won the Belle View Banquet Manor from hard-luck gambler Andre Bouras in a poker game, she rushes back from Palm Beach to help him run the place, hoping it will provide her dad with enough legitimate income to allow him to cut his ties with the underworld. Despite its dated décor and bone-shaking proximity to LaGuardia Airport, the catering hall has panoramic views out its windows that make it a worthy rival to the overpriced event venues in Manhattan—which Mia’s outer-borough friends drive her nuts by calling “the city.” (“Queens is the city” is her perennial retort.) And she proves her borough cred by moving in with her nonna in Astoria. But running a catering hall involves more than dealing with bridezillas like Alice Paluski, who’s determined to make her wedding bigger and better than her twin sister’s, or with momzillas like Barbara Grazio, Alice’s prospective mother-in-law, who’s determined to make the groom’s side of the wedding outshine the bride’s. She has to wrangle an ever changing cast of chefs, sous-chefs, waitstaff, decorators, DJs, and the occasional stripper, who all bring a host of quirks and baggage to the banquet table. She also has to deal with more than one corpse. It takes all of Mia’s considerable ingenuity to keep Ravello’s first legit enterprise from becoming a ticket right back to the slammer.
Her zany cast will have readers wondering whether DiRico’s series debut is set in Belle View or Bellevue.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2534-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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