Greasing The Pinata
By Tim Maleeny
Poisoned Pen Press, $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-59058566-5

Private investigator Cape Weather's has a weakness for damsels in distress, both in his professional and personal life. So when the lovely and very distressed Rachel Dobbins comes into his office there's no doubt that he'll soon find himself over his head in Mexico looking at corpses and fending off both the local police and the local criminals. Both Rachel's troubled brother and her negligent senator father have disappeared and she fears the worst. When the remains of two bodies wash up in Mexico, Cape begins to suspect that she's right. Cape must balance a fine line in dealing with Mexican officials and the criminals who want him off the trail, and soon he finds himself up to his neck in corruption and murder.

The third in the highly entertaining and humorous Cape Weathers series, Greasing the Piñata takes him to the Burning Man Festival as well as to Mexico, where Cape encounters brutally polite, all-powerful drug lords. Cape is again aided by his beautiful ally and friend Sally Mei, for whom "dressed to kill" means less a little black dress and more poison-dipped hairpins and throwing knives. An environmental activist reporter whose hair is a barometer for her emotions, a computer geek who communicates through his keyboard, and an extra large police detective round out his team and manage to pull Cape out of the many corners he gets himself into. The smart-aleck quips will remind readers of Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole, and indeed Cape embodies the traditional wise-cracking PI who makes jokes while throwing punches (or being punched). Extremely fast-paced, full of exotic locales, eccentric characters, and very funny, Maleeny once again succeeds in creating a very enjoyable and complex thriller.

Review by CINDY CHOW

©2009 Lorie Ham. All rights reserved.