David Handler (the Berger & Mitry Mysteries) writes funny mysteries. His victims are just as dead as the ones in more hard-boiled stories, but Handler makes us laugh as we read the snappy one-liners that keep on coming in novels like Runaway Man.
Benji Golden, a small, baby-faced man of 28, is working with his mom, said to have once been the only Jewish pole dancer in Manhattan, and their noticeably endowed assistant, Rita, at Golden Legal Services, a private detective agency. When a guy arrives at the agency in a limo and wearing a bespoke suit and (Benjy thinks) mink-lined shoes, the trio wonder: "Why us?" Peter Seymour, a partner at a prestigious law firm with access to everyone, has chosen Golden to find Bruce Weiner, a college student who disappeared. He says it's because Benji is so good at finding runaways. Over time, we find out that is not quite the whole story.
The young man is soon found; the complicating factor is that he's dead. Then, a friend of his is murdered and the estranged daughter of a very prominent family jumps out of a high window--or did she have help? Benji is suddenly in the middle of a very dangerous situation--complicated by the fact that he's taken up, in heated fashion, with a kindergarten teacher he met at shul. How he works everything out is plausible, entertaining, amusing and will have you turning pages until there are no more. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.