February 8, 2016
In Edgar-finalist Hallinan’s darkly comic fifth Junior Bender mystery (after 2014’s Herbie’s Game), the endearing Los Angeles burglar is faced with his biggest existential crisis yet. His enigmatic girlfriend, Ronnie Bigelow, has left him; a malicious girl is picking on his estranged teenage daughter; and everyone he knows seemingly wants him dead. Meanwhile, a down-and-out movie producer manipulates Bender into breaking into a mansion owned by Jeremy Granger (aka King Maybe), who many view as the “most powerful person in Hollywood.” When Bender is caught red-handed, King Maybe offers him a way out of his predicament—but the quick-witted thief realizes too late that he has been carefully set-up to take the fall for a much more nefarious crime. Powered by Hallinan’s smart and sardonic narrative voice (a young actress is described as an “emaciated, Giacometti sculpture of tendons, tension, and teeth”), this brisk romp through the Hollywood Hills reads like a novel half its length: an undeniable page-turner. Agent: Bob Mecoy, Bob Mecoy Literary.
February 15, 2016
This fifth larcenous adventure for Junior Bender (Herbie's Game, 2014, etc.) is aptly described in the closing Author's Note as "a show-business book that [is] essentially all burglaries. Plus Suley." Suley, whom you probably know as Tasha Dawn, is the starlet Hollywood producer Jeremy Granger insisted on pushing into the lead role of the charmless zombie TV series Dead Eye and carried off to the hymeneal altar. Now the romance has gone south, and Granger wants Junior to break into the home they still share, steal a list of goodies headed by a Turner oil painting that he doesn't want to share with Tasha, and help himself to anything else that takes his fancy. The job doesn't appeal to Junior, who'd rather not deal with the producer everyone calls King Maybe because he delights in letting projects languish in development hell in order to bring his enemies to heel and who's not crazy enough to attack a target equipped with state-of-the-art anti-burglary equipment, even with the homeowner's blessing. But Junior's in no position to refuse. His attempt to steal a ridiculously valuable postage stamp from a debt collector dubbed the Slugger, after his weapon of choice, has left targets on the backs of him and his current girlfriend/accomplice, Ronnie Bigelow--if that's even her name--and more than fresh funding, he needs fresh allies who can keep the Slugger and his minions at bay. The stakes are so high that Junior can scarcely find any time for what he considers his most pressing business: rescuing his 13-year-old daughter, Rina, from the frenemy who's determined to break up her budding romance with heartthrob Tyrone. Junior's sixth sense keeps warning him that he's being set up, and it's on the money every single time. Fans who don't mind his ritualistically repeated failures will eat up his adventures among Hollywood types whose moral senses are even more primitive than his.
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Starred review from April 1, 2016
Junior Bender (Herbie's Game) is in another fix. Barely escaping with his life after stealing one of the world's rarest stamps, he is on the lam from a very violent man, owner of said stamp. It quickly becomes clear there is far more going on than a stamp theft gone wrong; Junior is being set up to take a murder rap for studio mogul Jeremy Granger, better known as King Maybe. And Junior does not want to do anything to make King Maybe's life easier. VERDICT Twists and turns abound as Junior slips and ducks incoming blows. A rare man of integrity in a world of tinsel and dust, Junior may steal for a living, but he has scruples and will do anything to protect his loved ones. Fans of fast-paced thrillers with a lot of heart will enjoy this series.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from February 1, 2016
It's always a special treat for mystery fans when a new installment of a favorite series arrives. For fans of comic caper novels, there can be no treat to match the arrival of a new Junior Bender thriller. And you can multiply the treat factor by at least two here, since this is one of the best in an always sinfully entertaining series. Junior, full-time thief and part-time sleuth for L.A. crooks in need of detecting, has a way of landing in pickles, but this time the pickle is a doozy, heavily dilled and sized for Goliath. First, a simple burglary aimed at nabbing a rare stamp goes bad, and Junior is targeted by the stamp's owner, renowned for his use of baseball bats as torture tools; the plan Junior devises to get his head out of the thug's strike zone involves an even bigger gamble: robbing the unrobbable house of a notoriously treacherous movie mogul, the titular King Maybe. The curlicuing plot is itself the source of much of the appeal here, which is not to shortchange either the ever-quirky cast of bent but delightful characters or Hallinan's dazzling style. Many mystery writers rely on Chandlerian similes to inject humor into descriptive passages, but Hallinan digs deeper, going for metaphor instead: The wallpaper was in the midst of a long and acrimonious divorce with the walls. Are there too many lovable crooks in contemporary crime fiction? Well, maybe, but one thing's for sure: they're all chasing Junior.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)