Hubbert and Lil: Partners in Crime

Retired personnel manager T.S. Hubbert and his fiesty, unconventional, eighty-four-year-old aunt Lil investigate when murder taints Wall Street's most prestigious private bank and follow a trail that leads back decades to a long-hidden, deadly secret

In this surprise-filled debut, T. S. Hubbert, recently retired personnel manager at a prestigious Wall Street bank, doesn't even have time to sleep off his farewell party hangover before his frantic former boss is on the phone. An executive at Sterling & Sterling has been stabbed to death, and T.S. must deal with press and public. Dismayed by the police lieutenant's tunnel vision, T.S. and his sleuthing sidekick, 84-year-old Auntie Lil, conduct their own investigation of this and two subsequent VIP murders. Sterling & Sterling is no unbesmirched institution, and the two energetic retirees discover ugly skeletons in the corporate closet. Shaky grammar and spotty characterization--while Auntie Lil is a delightfully feisty "snoop sister," the portrait of T.S. lacks focus and credibility--weaken the superior plot in this first of projected series by a pseudonymous former employee of a Wall Street firm.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The forced-humor debut of T.S. Hubbert, a newly retired personnel director, and his octogenarian, quaintly bizarre Auntie Lil--the two of whom, archly analyzing the clues, unravel the murders connected with the stodgy, genteelly posh private bank Sterling & Sterling. The first murder, of unlikable partner Robert Cheswick, finds the victim with his fly undone and his old paperweight missing; the next finds another partner dead on his boat, fly undone, with a pitcher of margaritas nearby, and a new trinket he'd purchased missing; and the third death finds the treasurer at his country house, fly flapping open, and a book of his ``borrowed.'' As T.S. and Lil wrestle with the something old, something new, something borrowed, etc., refrain, they dredge up an old Sterling & Sterling scandal: gang rape on a naive, young secretary that led to illegitimacy and dishonor. Will T.S. and Lil find the murderer before ``something blue'' pops up? You betcha, but not before many wretchedly improbable conversations with cops, staff members, and each other. First in what has the look of being a stilted, amateurish series. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.