MOODY FOREVER

Scott Moody’s been in Vietnam, in a mental institution, and in a shamus’s office, but now he’d cheerfully settle for balancing his nights driving a cab around Spokane with his days as a second-string reporter for the Mill City newspaper his ex-wife Andrea works for, and his daydreams of reuniting with Andrea and his daughter with his night dreams (and not only dreams) of steamy sex with nubile socialite Xanthia Welch. No such luck. Minutes after Xanthia’s wealthy father Andrew, who’s not even supposed to know Moody’s a cabbie, tells him from the backseat of his cab how much he disapproves of Moody’s romance with Xanthia, he’s stabbed to death under Moody’s eyes. The police, not much gifted with imagination, suspect Moody, but they’re in the wrong book this time. Which is what Xanthia realizes when she learns that her father left an estate of $70 million and what Moody confirms when his research into Andrew Welch’s past reveals that he seems to have died in 1954. Moody (Moody Gets the Blues, not reviewed), who dreams of death every night and thinks about it every ten seconds when he’s awake, is the perfect candidate to investigate Welch’s shadowy (and, as it turns out, practically fathomless) past, and his ensuing expedition to Palm Beach and environs is as wild a ride as you can expect to share this season. Just don’t look too closely at the clothespins and mucilage that hold the crazy plot together.