Murder Is the Deal of the Day: A Gil and Claire Hunt Mystery - Hardcover

Robert J. Randisi’s 2011 novel for Perfect Crime, The End of Brooklyn, won plaudits in a Booklist starred review as “dark, brooding and thoroughly compelling.” The six-volume Miles Jacoby series, reissued in 2012, brought back the prize-fighter PI in novels as infused with the harmonies of New York as a Canarsie cab driver. “If [it] moved any faster you’d have to nail it down to read it,” said Elmore Leonard of the first Jacoby book. Described by Booklist as “the last of the pulp writers,” Randisi has published in the western, mystery, horror, science fiction and men’s adventure genres, and he has been honored by the Private Eye Writers of America with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Christine Matthews has published over sixty stories under her real name, Marthayn Pelegrimas, as well as her “Matthews” mystery pseudonym. She has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Deadly Allies II, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Lethal Ladies, For Crime Out Loud I & II, Mickey Spillane’s Vengeance Is Hers, Cat Crimes On Holiday, Till Death Do Us Part, Hollywood and Crime and Crime Square. Her stories have been chosen five times for Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg’s Best of the Year books, the most recent being the 2011 edition. She is the author of four novels and the editor of several anthologies.

Three murder victims, all women, are smothered to death within days of each other. World-class shoppers all, they met their fates while watching Claire Hunthost of St. Louis's most popular TV home-shopping showon videotape. Solely on that basis, C laire finds herself rated as suspect number one. Why? Good question. And on page 152, a minor character finally raises it, for all the good it does her. The best answer she gets pertains to the possibility of a mysterious aura hovering about a policewoman 's head, the dark effect of which is a pronounced anti-Claire bias. ``I think she's dirty,'' grumbles Detective Myra Longfellow, who may be the least convincing cop since the Keystoners. But now Claire and her adoring husband, bookshop owner Gil, find the mselves under the gun, so to speak. In time-honored crime-fiction fashion, they respond by becoming amateur sleuths in order to prove Claire's innocence. Sleuthing takes them down various unrewarding paths and into several ill-tempered confrontations with the police. At length, though, they turn up at a meeting of Gamblers Anonymous where, somewhat implausibly, several suspects put in an appearance. Shortly thereafter, the trail again goes cold. The sleuthing, both amateur and professional, seems to reach a dead end. Actually, such sleuthing as theres been all slid into the low grade. And when the feckless killer is eventually caught, it's mostly because he's entirely cooperative. Bland characters, feeble plotting, undistinguished prose. Randisi (In the S hadow of the Arch, 1998, etc.) has done better. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.