Steal the Show is the second novel featuring PI Willis Gidney, ex-cop, adoptee with a troubled background, jazz lover, aikido adept (which surprises villains, who sometimes deem him "chubby") and a cynical/romantic "man of honor" in the best Spenser tradition.
Kaufman juggles an impressive number of plots, never dropping one: Will Willis defeat the animus of Florence Walters, caseworker with the DC Adoptive Services, and be able to adopt his beloved Sarah, the infant he pulled from a burning house? Will he be able to keep his relationship with Lilly McClelland, in spite of personal and interpersonal stresses? Will he be able to divine the murky connections among Rush Gemelli (who blackmailed him into a job); his dad, Chuck Gemelli, head of the Motion Picture Alliance Council; ex-FBI agent Longstreet; Draper Kane, ex-Gemelli partner in an earlier venture? Will Gidney be able to protect Chuck and his new movie-to-theater transmitting software, unknown to all but Rush? Will he continue to outmaneuver attempts of various gangs to kill him?
Thomas Kaufman's Willis Gidney is a complex, likeable character with a keen wit: meeting actor Corbin Brooks at a favorite café, Brooks is "as inconspicuous as a jackhammer at a Bach recital." Willis is a completely original detective; his distinction comes from who he is, not what he does. Perhaps most interesting of all is that Kaufman has penned a truly postracial detective story, with effortless style and accomplishment. --Judith Hawkins-Tillirson, proprietress, Wyrdhoard Books, and blogger at Still Working for Books