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SHAKY GROUND by Steve Brewer

SHAKY GROUND

by Steve Brewer

Pub Date: May 17th, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15652-9
Publisher: St. Martin's

``I couldn't remember the last time I'd outsmarted anybody,'' remarks Albuquerque shamus Bubba Mabry with a modesty entirely justified by his handling of his latest case. Consider the facts: Hired to find missing David Field, Bubba (Witchy Woman, 1996) discovers the biology prof's dead body in a desert photography blind—and promptly vomits on it. Bubba's ham-handed questioning antagonizes not only the publicity-shy developer whose land Field had been trespassing on, and the developer's equally sensitive goons, but the chairperson of the University of New Mexico biology department—who threatens him with the majesty of her board of regents—and his own client, Field's widow, who fires him when he digs a little too deeply into Field's private life (his private parts were little more private than Howard Stern's). Even when the goons stake out Bubba, it's his fiancÇe, indomitable Albuquerque Gazette reporter Felicia Quattlebaum, who scares them off. With a track record like this, imagine how Bubba will act when he goes up against a serious player like Tony ``the Tiger'' Birbone, or a bounty hunter who wants to collaborate with Tony the way a fisherman wants to collaborate with a worm. Amusing froth, though too lightweight to sustain the postlude that runs on and on past the climax.