From Publishers Weekly
Edgar-winning nonfiction author Weiss (Double Playp, makes a snappy fiction debut here. Ben Henry, 40-ish ex-reporter and San Francisco cabdriver is asked for help by Yollo, foster son of Ben's best friend. It seems someone has set the young man up to take the rap for the murder of San Francisco's top columnist. Yollo, an outlandishly fey drug dealer, isn't one of Ben's favorite people, but the former newspaperman is intrigued by the murder and begins sleuthing. Ben sees Yollo shot to death and soon becomes embroiled in a tangled web of murder, drugs, hidden family ties and multigenerational revenge. The colorful characters include the columnist's beautiful daughter, a powerful and malevolent newspaper publisher and his gay son. The solution won't surprise veteran mystery readers, but Weiss keeps things moving, and Ben Henry is nicely hard-boiled without being trite. Especially refreshing is his affectionately skeptical view of San Francisco: "More like Cincinnati than it could ever admit to itself, a vain little popinjay of a town that called itself everybody's favorite."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Narrator-hero Ben Henry, an ex-newspaperman now driving a cab in San Francisco, makes a modestly promising debut - in a hard-boiled, often droll murder-mystery, fairly stylish but also overfamiliar and overwrought (Ross Macdonald Gothic). The dead man is famous veteran Frisco columnist Harry Shugart, shot dead in his Pacific Heights home. And Ben starts his amateur sleuthing as a favor to pathetic drug-dealer Yollo Current (an old, if not fond, acquaintance), who was supposed to deliver $90,000 worth of cocaine to Shugart's house on the murder night, making Yollo a top suspect (and probable frame-up victim). Was Shugart killed, then, because of drug connections? Or because of his semi-secret homosexual affair with Ricky Thiesmann, son of San Francisco's top newspaper publisher? (By coincidence - one of far too many here - this is the very same publisher who fired hero Ben for overzealous reporting on city corruption.) And what about Shugart's sexy daughter, whose finance is a thuggish wheeler-dealer? Ben's search for the truth Involves a clutch of predictables: proliferating corpses, Raymond Chandler-ish seduction by the femme fatale, Oedipal secrets and primal motives exposed. The narration occasionally lapses into macho sentimentality and self-dramatization (especially in Ben's dialogue with a dead pal's spirit). But Weiss, author of Edgar-winning nonfiction (Double Play), more often gives likable Ben a fresh, sardonic, amusing viewpoint - on San Francisco neighborhoods, the newspaper business, and (above all) the authentic details of big-city cab-driving. So this is a sturdy, well-paced first outing that could herald a welcome new series - if Weiss van wriggle free of the excess cliches. (Kirkus Reviews)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
