Synopsis
The Brits in the Liverpool Daily call "laid back private eye" V. (for Victor) Daniel "two parts Steve Martin to one part Groucho Marx." The Washington Post calls him "something special - even beyond his Hawaiian shirts and six-foot-seven-inch frame ... a great companion - clever, funny, and resourceful." And the growing legions of David M Pierce fans know there's no one else even remotely like Vic Daniel in mystery writing on either side of the Atlantic. From his penchant for taking on any case (no problem too petty) to a West Coast wacko staff that includes a larcenous backup named Benny the Boy and a rock/poetry-penning Girl Friday, Vic is that rarity in the 'tec-trade: fun.
Now he's back in his San Fernando Valley rattrap office, stuck between a weed-and-wino-filled vacant lot and a Vietnamese takeout. The ambiance is early gumshoe, but his client, the gorgeous dame with the baby-blues telling him a sob story, is strictly class. She says she's a friend of a friend, and she has a simple task for Vic: pick up her Uncle Theo at the airport and "baby-sit" him for a while.
Of course, Vic knows she's as full of baloney as she is beautiful even as he scoops up her retainer. She's not who she says she is and he intends to unmask her little white lies just as soon as he traces a skip - a misguided soul who's run away without paying - for a loan shark named Fats. Two small-fry cases? Uh-uh. Big time trouble. Vic will soon be on his way to a Montreal hockey game, the world's best pastrami sandwich, a California town populated entirely by Chinese, a contretemps with the Israeli secret police ... and the morgue. Who is Uncle Theo? What is the real deal behind the skip-trace? Can Vic handle this latest dust-up with the dark side of human nature? Is the pastrami on rye?
Reviews
At the start of the fourth Vic Daniel novel, following Angels in Heaven , readers might wonder whether the hero-narrator is charmingly off the wall or just sophomoric. Further along, however, the former opinion is likely to prevail, bolstered by Pierce's talent for constructing solid plots. Daniel, a 67 PI in San Fernando Valley, is hired to find an aging Nazi in Northern California and another man fleeing an L.A. loan shark. Along the way, there are some surprises and some violence, including death; it's a great pleasure to watch Daniel outwit various good guys and bad 'uns. Best of all, though, is Daniel himself, with his botched quotations ("Press on, McDuff"), creative attributions ("but what's in a name, anyway, as Percy Bysshe once quipped") and his simple silliness (" 'Voila,' I said. 'That's French for something' "). Readers will succumb either to Pierce's rock-solid plot construction or to Daniel's imperturbably sunny disposition. You have to love a hero who thinks his pink-and-blue Nash Metropolitan is a classic.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Determinedly offbeat second hardcover adventure (Angels in Heaven, 1992) for geekishly tall San Fernanado Valley p.i. Vic Daniel and his part-time operatives--Sara (the punk poet), Willing Boy (her movie star boyfriend), and Benny (the scam artist). The two main cases here involve them in an Israeli hunt for aging Nazis--which turns into a bloodbath in a northern California Chinese community--and in a trek to Montreal to find William Gince, who supposedly welshed on Fats the loan shark and is now trying to outrun his goons. A subsidiary case for Daniel tackles repeated B&E's at Mobile Home Park. Throughout, there are such diversions as a longish, sophomoric poem from Daniel; riddles sprung on Daniel (some explained, some not); cutesy direct addresses to the reader; and an irritatingly mannered prose style that occasionally settles on a witty turn of phrase. Not as amusing or original as Angels, and the relentlessly peppy tone and wisecracks will lose readers fast. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Garrulous private investigator Vic Daniel spouts a nonstop line of hype that fits right in with his Studio City surroundings. Jovial and upbeat to a fault, his "cute" wordplays can pall; however, his inclination to give out good free advice at the same time brings in pertinent information as well. This time he checks out a choice woman's story about an emigrating Estonian and searches for a fat loan shark's bail jumper (with help from an air-headed poetess and her hunky boyfriend). All in all, a fascinating, half-crazy romp.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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