From Publishers Weekly
Readers will find little of interest in this tedious snake's-eye view of a Massachusetts shore town where the residents are crusty, fractious or plumb loco in ways that, apparently intended as winsome, are simply contrived. Soon after determinedly downscale trawlerman Ozzie Barrett springs his Uncle Barry from the asylum, the old man, a harmless Peeping Tom, is framed for the murder of a sexy widow found floating in her pool. That's only part of Ozzie's troubles. His wife cuckolds and leaves him. A lien is slapped on his fishing boat. And just as he finds love in the arms of a feisty boat mechanic named Ruby, his straying wife returns. Despite his woes, Ozzie breaks into the dead woman's home to scoop up innumerable clues, an event topped in unlikelihood by his twice burgling a bank and rifling high-security computer files. Chaput ( The Man on the Train ) unhandily stitches the mystery together with a love triangle and a villainous banker's massive real estate and tax evasion scams.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A pair of crowded, noisy scenes at Mildred's, a Massachusetts North Shore hangout, frame this shaggy, offspeed mystery; and by the fade-out, you'll have grown to love all hands present--especially Ozzie Barrett, a lackadaisical trawler who turns detective to clear his lovable, erratic Uncle Barry (whom Ozzie has just sprung from the loony bin where his two spinster aunts had committed him so that one of them could get married without his carryings-on) from a charge of killing well-to-do local widow Veronica Hammond. By the close, Ozzie and friends--raffish professorial buddy Wilson Malone, come-hither Marine mechanic Ruby Willey, and her eccentric dad Rocket--have foiled the police, smarmy banker Richie DeSilva, and Ozzie's soon-to-be-ex to reveal a much more plausible killer. Nothing original--or even very mysterious--happens, but Chaput (The Man on the Train, 1986) puts a fresh and welcome spin on every incident and every screwy type. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
