“The Soprano Wore Falsettos,” by Mark Schweizer (St. James Music Press, 207 pages, $12.95)
With this charming, comic series you get two mysteries for the price of one, although you might want a rebate for the mystery- within-the-mystery. You see, Hayden Konig, a small-town chief of police who doubles as the choir master at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, bought Raymond Chandler’s typewriter at auction, hoping that he could channel some of that hard-boiled writer’s genius into his own prose.
Konig’s metaphor-laden efforts, identified by a typewriter font, are dropped here and there in the narrative, like – as this fledgling writer might put it – a pigeon with the runs. Let’s hope Chandler’s shade has a sense of humor. It’s a good thing that Hayden is “rich as a televangelist with his own 900 number.”
There isn’t much crime in St. Germaine, N.C., if you don’t count the murders that plague the church on a regular basis (this is the fourth book in the series), so Hayden has plenty of time to churn out his masterpieces. But when bickering in the congregation over a $16 million gift turns into murder, Hayden is forced to focus his attention on a real crime.
Although much of the humor is aimed at church politics and small-town Southern life, it’s delivered with a light, affectionate touch by an author who seems truly fond of his characters.
“The Prop,” by Pete Hautman (Simon & Schuster, 303 pages, $14)
Peeky Kane is a 44-year-old widow who works as a prop at a casino near Tucson owned by the Santa Cruz Indians, an exceedingly small tribe that exists largely to reap the benefits of legalized gambling. She’s paid $110 a shift plus benefits to sit in on short-handed poker games, which she plays with her own bankroll. Since she’s an experienced, careful player, she usually wins more than she loses, and best of all, she likes her work.
Her private life is another story. She has a crack-addicted daughter, Jaymie, and a boyfriend, Buddy, whom she’s comfortable with, but not much more. When Jaymie vanishes and she learns that Buddy may be involved in robbing the casino of a cool $1 million and killing two employees as well, Peeky’s orderly world comes crashing down around her ears. She is already in hot water for having unwittingly won a rigged jackpot, and when she is fired from her job and loses most of her bankroll and belongings in a break-in at her home, she has no one to turn to but her hot-tempered son-in-law, who’s anxious to get his wife back.
But it turns out she may have another friend in the old man who got official recognition for the Santa Cruz tribe in the first place and who has a soft spot in his heart for Peeky. How they straighten out the mess Peeky – and the tribe – are in makes for a tidy, taut little thriller from this versatile writer, a National Book Award winner for his juvenile fiction. It is also a perceptive character study and, as a bonus, an education in how reservation casinos really work.
“The Last Full Measure,” by Hal Glatzer (Perseverance Press, 289 pages, $13.95)
Saxophone and swing fiddle player Katy Green joins an all-girl dance band, the Swinging Sarongs, hastily assembled to play on the legendary cruise ship the Lurline, bound for Hawaii in late November 1941. The only newcomer to the group is Roselani Akau, a full-blooded Hawaiian singer and piano player whose brother, surfing champion Bill Apapane, gets himself killed before the five-day voyage is over.
Suspicion immediately falls upon one of four young Japanese men who are also passengers, what with anti-Japanese sentiment raging among whites and Hawaiians alike on the islands. Katy’s not so sure, and she’s not so sure who among the passengers she can trust as they steam toward their destination, where she and her fellow band members have been pressed into service by Roselani to hunt for a legendary treasure dating to the days when Hawaii was an independent monarchy.
The musical and period details are both abundant and convincing, and for good measure there’s a crash course in Hawaiian history woven in. Lighthearted as the book is, with its lively characters and jumped-up, slangy prose, there is an underlying gravity to the story as it plays out against the imminent attack on Pearl Harbor.
Tom and Enid Schantz write a monthly column on new mysteries.
