Voodoo, Ltd. [Hardcover]

Ross Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1992

Detective Arthur Wu of Wudu, Ltd. takes on a case involving two kinky British hypnotists and a Hollywood personality who is accused of gunning down her very wealthy ex-fiance+a7. By the author of The Cold War Swap. 35,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his 24th book, counting the five he has written as Oliver Beech, Thomas ( Twilight at Mac's Place ; The Fourth Durango ) is in top form; this thriller is stuffed with incident, lively characters and sophisticated wit. On New Year's morning 1991 movie star Ione Gamble is found passed out in the Malibu home of her ex-fiance, a producer who had jilted her. She's holding, and has fired, a gun, killing him, but she can't remember anything because she was wildly drunk the night before. To determine what happened, her lawyer hires an English brother-sister team of hypnotists, who vanish before revealing what they may have gleaned from Gamble. Then the lawyer hires Enno Glimm, specialist in hiring specialists, who hires London-based Americans Artie Wu and Quincy Durant of Wudu, Ltd. And they hire their own helpers: con man Maurice "Otherguy" Overby, academic Booth Stallings and Georgia Blue, a former U.S. Secret Service agent just sprung from five years in a Philippine jail (met before in Out on the Rim ). Once the characters assemble in L.A., the plot takes off, touching down for murder, blackmail, discreet kinky sex and even incest. To this exhilarating, splendidly choreographed caper, Thomas provides a very satisfying ending, capped by a wonderful final line. Not to be missed. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Artie Wu and Quincy Durant, the principal soldiers-of-fortune in WuDu, Ltd. (Out on the Rim, 1987), are called in to mop up the mess when Hollywood star Ione Gamble is accused of killing her sometime producer/fianc‚ Billy Rice. Gamble's go-between, Enno Glimm, doesn't expect Wu and Durant to vindicate his client legally; he wants them to track down a pair of fly-by-night hypnotherapists who promised to find out whether Gamble could remember anything about the fatal New Year's Eve without reporting directly back to the police. Now they've skedaddled with every indication of having made incriminating videotapes of Gamble revealing all under hypnosis--tapes they're willing to peddle either to Gamble or to the highest-bidding tabloid. Assembling a team that includes aging spymaster Booth Stallings, con man Maurice ``Otherguy'' Overby, and former Secret Service agent Georgia Blue, just getting sprung from a Manila prison, Wu and Durant head out to Malibu and flex their tentacles: Stallings and Blue rent Rice's beach house; Wu puts Gamble into another trance; Otherguy puts out the word that he's looking for nasty videotapes; and the team rents innumerable plush autos they drive to motels where they discover more corpses and predict a final calamity that somehow never arrives. The effortless expertise of WuDu is all a little foolish, of course, but it's hard not to devour the whole outlandish tale at a sitting with a contented smile. Murder, blackmail, double-crossing galore--it all adds up to a delightfully relaxed canter around WuDu's track. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 282 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Pr (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892964510
• ISBN-13: 978-0892964512
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,166,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thomas outdoes Thomas, December 28, 1999

By 

Doug Vaughn - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Voodoo Ltd (Paperback)

Apart from the fun of another Artie Wu and Quincy Durant adventure, this book provides the additional pleasure of uniting them with some of the more memorable charcaters from other Thomas novels. Georgia Blue, former government agent turned killer provides a special tension for Durant in this novel, and con man Maurice "Otherguy" Overby (It wasn't me - it must have been some otherguy who looked like me) brings his own just outside the law talents to bear.

The plot seems a little extreme, even for Thomas whose plots can twist like you wouldn't believe, but he always seems to exaggerate a bit when he is dealing with either California and/or the entertainment industry. Still, the book moves at such a pace and the dialogue and one-liners come so thick and fast that one doesn't have time to fret about how likely some of the convolutions are. This is high speed, fun, great reading.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Convoluted, but in a good way., July 29, 2004

By 

Michael G. "mikefromrochester" (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Voodoo, Ltd. (Hardcover)

The book's title, Voodoo, Ltd., derives from a mispronounciation of Wudu, Ltd., a London based detective agency run by two Americans, Artie Wu and Quincy Durant.
Early in the course of this smartly written dark comedy, a wealthy German businessman with the improbable name of Enno Glimm hires Wu and Durant to locate a pair of British hypnotists who have suddenly gone missing in Southern California. Glimm suspects that the hypnotists are about to blackmail Ione Gamble, a Hollywood actress-director, who has been charged with murdering her ex-fiance. Which is to say that Voodoo, Ltd. is the granddaddy of all shaggy dog stories. And what an entertaining one it is!
Before descending onto the Los Angeles scene, Wu and Durant hire three former colleagues to assist them. They are; Booth Stallings a 65 year old counterterrorism expert, Georgia Blue, a statuesque former Secret Service agent who has spent the last five years in a Manila prison, and Maurice Otherguy Overby, an adventurer with dubious ethical standards. Together, these five very colorful and supremely resourceful characters use every trick in the book to solve the mystery while at the same time making sure that one or more of them doesn't double cross the others.
This is a deliciously witty, irreverent novel. Believable? Not for a minute. It's not meant to be.
It is meant to be a hilariously funny, over the top, comedic novel. And by that standard, it is an overwhelming success. Read Voodoo, Ltd., you'll love it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Worth Reading, December 5, 2000

By 

Peter Kenney (Birmingham, Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Voodoo Ltd (Paperback)

This is the second book in a series with the same cast of leading characters. Artie Wu and Quincy Durant are still teamed up as a pair of detectives. Booth Stallings has joined Otherguy Overby to form Overby, Stallings Associates, a consulting firm. The plot centers around the murder of a Hollywood producer and subsequent attempts to blackmail film star Ione Gamble. Wu and Durant are hired by Gamble's rep to help on solving her problems. They, in turn, hire Overby, Stallings and Georgia Blue. All are survivors from OUT ON THE RIM. Five years have passed and Georgia has just been released from a Manila prison. The others have made a bundle of money and then lost it in the interim. Now they are hungry for work again. This book is well worth reading.