Five Star First Edition Mystery - Maitland
*Starred Review* Evan Maitland is a former Chicago cop making his way as a specialty furniture dealer in the Windy City. Readers hoping for a kindred soul to Lovejoy, Jonathan Gash's charming antique-dealing, crime-solving British rogue, will find a very different but equally appealing sort of bloke in the pages of this knockout first novel. Maitland walked away from law enforcement but not adrenalin. He supplements his furniture income as a bounty hunter, tracking down bail skips. His latest runner is Barry McDermott, an attorney charged with statutory rape ("She looked 25!"). What Maitland doesn't know is that a Jamaican posse is also on McDermott's tail; he has nearly a million dollars of their drug money. Maitland and the Jamaicans find their prey at the same time; the ruckus leaves two dead and Maitland minus one lung. The surviving Jamaicans want Maitland dead. The remainder of the tale finds a diminished Maitland dodging Jamaican hit attempts and trying to convince a corrupt Chicago cop that he's not aligned with the Jamaican posse. This is an extraordinary debut that harkens back to Elmore Leonard's classicCity Primeval: High Noon in Detroit(1999). Great modern noir; don't miss it, and clamor for more.Wes LukowskyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved