The Fame Thief (Junior Bender #3) (Junior Bender Mysteries)
Junior Bender is a thief and a good one, but he has a second gig: solving crimes for bad guys. Naturally, the bad guys can’t take their cases to the authorities, but who says bad guys don’t want justice, too? That’s where Junior comes in. This time he’s working for eightysomething Irwin Dressler, Hollywood Mob boss, who wants to right a 60-year-old wrong. Dolores La Marr was an up-and-coming starlet when she was linked to Vegas gangsters and her career trashed. Dressler is sure she was set up and wants Junior to figure out who was behind the frame. A cold case is one thing, but a long-frozen one is quite another. Still, Dressler is not somebody you argue with, so Junior begins asking questions, and the people he gets answers from promptly start dying. The tangled plot unwinds eventually, producing some surprises along the way—and a wealth of golden age Hollywood ambience—but the real draw here remains the fast-talking, quick-thinking Junior, a slightly seedier but equally entertaining version of Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr. If comic crime is your thing, you need to know Junior Bender. --Bill Ott