WHAT WOULD JOHNNY DENT DO?

In this novel, an author-turned-screenwriter’s search for a missing actor is one for the books.

Not for nothing does Charlie McGinley love the Preston Sturges comedy Sullivan’s Travels. Like the film’s fictional director who no longer wishes to make frivolous comedies, McGinley wants to wash his hands of Johnny Dent, the phenomenally popular literary detective he created and on whose book sales he relies to take care of three ex-wives. Does he have the Great American Novel in him? The jury is out. Until then, he is racked with writer’s block on his seventh Dent mystery, which his publisher eagerly awaits. But life imitates art when McGinley, hired to adapt his recent book for the movies, is drawn into a mystery that sounds like the plot of one of his novels. The film’s star has vanished after clashing with the director. The star’s wife, a beautiful but faded actor who just happens to be McGinley’s former fiancee, is a prime suspect. She wants his help, much to the increasing displeasure of McGinley’s current wife. He assures his wife that he is only going to ask a few questions. “You know how people usually react when you ask questions?” she responds. “They have a tendency to pull guns and try to shoot you.” Indeed, Ben, the ghost of a Navajo shaman with whom McGinley commiserates, warns him: “Bad things are about to start happening, and you’re gonna be right in the middle of ’em.” Ingraffia’s second McGinley mystery is a brisk and breezy read. It could be sharper in its wit and menace, but McGinley is an eminently likable protagonist with a lot of baggage, including his Native American mother, an 18-year-old runaway who abandoned him when he was young (“He would have loved to talk to her about her decision, but she died of a drug overdose when she was nineteen”). Still, Ben may be a bridge too far for readers who resist digressions into magical realism.

An amusing mystery with enough genuine peril to keep readers intrigued.