Bubba Mabry, an underemployed Albuquerque private eye, hates flying. But when Amber Fields, a paying client, wants to find her missing husband, biology professor Harry, Mabry takes a gut-wrenching helicopter ride over remote desert, where he finds the professor's body. He then signs on with Amber to find the killer, who may have some connection with a reclusive real-estate developer--part Howard Hughes, part Don Corleone--also under investigation by reporter Felicia Quattlebaum, Bubba's fiancee. In a clever variation on the sleuthing-couple theme, Bubba and Felicia go Nick and Nora Charles one better by each solving the case--through different means. Bubba interviews the principals and tangles with mobsters, while Felicia analyzes real-estate deals. Brewer's characters are appealing and amusing, and he vividly captures the feel of Albuquerque's neighborhoods and the desert. His book also has unsettling insights about development, corruption, and environmental politics. A promising series.
John Rowen
From Kirkus Reviews
``I couldn't remember the last time I'd outsmarted anybody,'' remarks Albuquerque shamus Bubba Mabry with a modesty entirely justified by his handling of his latest case. Consider the facts: Hired to find missing David Field, Bubba (Witchy Woman, 1996) discovers the biology prof's dead body in a desert photography blind--and promptly vomits on it. Bubba's ham-handed questioning antagonizes not only the publicity-shy developer whose land Field had been trespassing on, and the developer's equally sensitive goons, but the chairperson of the University of New Mexico biology department--who threatens him with the majesty of her board of regents--and his own client, Field's widow, who fires him when he digs a little too deeply into Field's private life (his private parts were little more private than Howard Stern's). Even when the goons stake out Bubba, it's his fianc‚e, indomitable Albuquerque Gazette reporter Felicia Quattlebaum, who scares them off. With a track record like this, imagine how Bubba will act when he goes up against a serious player like Tony ``the Tiger'' Birbone, or a bounty hunter who wants to collaborate with Tony the way a fisherman wants to collaborate with a worm. Amusing froth, though too lightweight to sustain the postlude that runs on and on past the climax. --
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