Red Knight: a novel [signed]

Private eye Dub Greenert races against time to find a mysterious assassin stalking Raleigh Lee Menzies--nicknamed the Red Knight--a leading activist in the civil rights movement during the 1960s.

This peculiarly appealing New Orleans mystery offers twice the pleasure--and about the same nutritional value--of a hot beignet. Davis ( The Murder of Frau Schutz ) brings back series PI Dub Greenert, now recovering from a cardiac episode but shakily on the job. "Visibly lily-white" Pittsburgh transplant Dub and his live-in lady love, Vonna, who is black, both work for the mostly black detective agency run by pervasively fey Honore St. Jean Devraix. Devraix sends them to look into a mail bombing at the home of a local civil rights legend, blueblood Raleigh Lee Menzies. Menzies made hordes of Old South enemies when he backed integration in the 1960s, and new black enemies in the 1990s when he published a tell-all book about the early leaders. Though rebuffed by Menzies himself, Dub and Vonna are called back by his boozy wife and wealthy family friend when Raleigh Lee is kidnapped. Dub chases redneck herrings and is abused by the FBI, stonewalled by the Menzies family retainer, manhandled by city cops, messed with by the Mafia and nearly killed by the bad guys before he hits on the truth behind the legend and a mystery woman. Davis runs his quirky cast through a thin but serviceable plot to a feasible denoument.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Oddly coupled private investigators Delbert ``Dub'' Greenert and his black girlfriend Vonna, last seen in Davis's White Rook (1990), sort out the kidnapping of an old-line liberal New Orleans attorney. For whom was the bomb in lawyer Raleigh Lee Menzies's mailbox meant? Probably not for luckless lowlife ``Bantam Billy'' Alberts, who had the bad fortune to trip the trigger. Billy's brother, however, takes the bomb personally and holds the addressee responsible. He is only one of the many people in New Orleans who would, apparently, like to see the last of Mr. Menzies. Menzies made a lot of enemies when he campaigned for civil rights back in the Sixties and then published a very revealing autobiography. Menzies is too noble to be awfully worried, but his wife's best friend has more sense. She hires Dub Greenert to look after the Menzies family. Rejecting the protection, Raleigh Menzies is promptly kidnapped. The FBI and the tough New Orleans cop Menzies rescued as a lad from racist policemen try to keep Greenert off the case, but Mrs. Menzies, who seems to have a drinking problem, trusts only Dub. Testy from dieting and from bickering with Vonna, who isn't dieting but should, Dub is not running on all cylinders- -but his southern sense of duty keeps him on the job long enough to get kidnapped himself. Davis's formidable writing skills show up in the scenes of southern suburban sprawl, but there are no real surprises here. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.