From Library Journal
Traversing the decades from the Sixties to the Nineties, San Francisco private investigator Dan Kasdan strong-arms deadbeat dads, returns LSD Jesuses to frantic parents, and protects many people?but not himself. Vulnerable to the bohemian wiles of Priscilla, Dan woos her, marries her, and begets Jeff. Trouble appears in paradise when Priscilla urges Dan to work for the disreputable Karim, an exotic purveyor of porn and drugs. After all, doesn't he want his family to have the very best? A seasoned Beat writer who has authored numerous works of fiction and nonfiction (e.g., The Great American Jackpot, LJ 12/15/69), Gold excels at creating a group of misfits who are all seeking for something just outside their reach. But though the book opens well, it seems to lag midway through and never picks up the pace. For large fiction collections.?Mary Ellen Elsbernd, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Gold, the author of many wry and poignant novels, writes frequently about the death of love and the pangs of late middle age. His new novel is a riff on the same subject, masquerading (not entirely successfully) as a hard-boiled detective novel. Dan Kasdan, former philosophy instructor, now a private investigator in the Bay Area, tracks down missing teenagers and deadbeat dads, but his heart is no longer in the chase. Divorced many years, Dan is still hopelessly in love with Priscilla, his ex-wife. He hopes to win her back by doing a job or two for Karim, a drug dealer and pornographer (whose legitimate businesses are only a little less shady than the illegal ones). The relatively weak plot is ameliorated by Gold's terrific ear for dialogue, his dead-on insights into the angst of growing up and growing old (prostate problems, gum disease, cataracts), and the portrait of the last 30 years in San Francisco as seen through the eyes of this tough, heart-of-gold gumshoe longing for a lost love.
Nancy Pearl
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
