Sanders tried out the hard-boiled-detective-narrator genre in The Sixth Commandment (1979), with mediocre, heavy-breathing, stickily cliched results. And here he's going a similar route. . . but with his very New-Yorky tongue jammed completely in cheek. So, though overextended and often a little silly, this is a much more comfortable entertainment. The sleuth is 5'3" Joshua Bigg, resident investigator for a posh East Side law firm - where he's just gotten two separate hot assignments from two senior partners: partner Tabatchnick wants Josh to deal with a man claiming to have key info on the will of the late Sol Kipper, a window-jump-suicide textile king; partner Teitelbaum wants Josh to get the lowdown on Prof. Yale Stonehouse, who has mysteriously vanished. Josh tackles both cases: Kipper was murdered, of course (probably by his sexy second wife and her social-reforming minister-boyfriend), with murder too for a would-be blackmailer; meanwhile, missing Prof. Stonehouse, a nasty type, is revealed to have been suffering from arsenic poisoning before his disappearance. Then, inevitably, after 250 pages of predictable sleuthing, the two cases connect (an increasingly familiar hard-boiled formula): that shady, Kipper-killing minister is seen consorting with Prof. Stonehouse's daughter! And Josh will go to the minister's hometown to uncover a history of sadistic Svengali-manipulation. . . which leads to a trap and showdown aboard the villain's houseboat-cum-mortuary. So-so detection - stretched out unconscionably. But Josh is a breezily likable narrator who takes lots of time-outs for musings on shortness and updates on his hesitant sex life: voluptuous secretary Yetta Apatoff, nubile witness Perdita Schug ("Let's you and me make Yum-yum"), and eager 34-year-old virgin Cleo back at the apartment house. Plus: platonic support from 6'6" secretary Mrs. Gertrude Kletz, a very sharp and engaging lady. Longwinded but mostly agreeable folderol, then, nearly all in dialogue - with Sanders happily at home in jokey, brassy Manhattan.
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