Clutching at Straws

"Lefty Wright breaks into Judge Chancellor's empty house easy as pie. He has no clue about why he is being paid such a handsome sum for doing it. But the job description hadn't mentioned the corpse of a prominent criminal court judge lying halfway under the bed." "When he's charged with murder, Lefty's SOS zooms over the phone wires and reaches one Jake Diamond, Private Investigator. It's easy to understand why the unprepossessing guy with grease spots on his only two neckties gets the call. Jake is a love. His unexpected skills as an investigator and his assortment of multitalented friends make him one of the luckiest private investigators west of the Rockies, and maybe east, too. He's got Joey Russo - an influential mob boss to most people but a substitute father figure (with a soupcon of Jewish mother) to Jake. His secretary, Darlene, runs the office and does everything but tie his shoes. And no one else has as eager a gofer as Vinnie Strings, so called because his real name, Stradivarious, is too hard for some to say. And then the reconciliation of Jake and his ex-wife Sally is coming along very nicely indeed." "Jakes takes the case, but it soon leads down a series of side paths that sprawl out from Lefty's prison cell like the tentacles of an octupus. What's the real story of the kidnapping of the prominent lawyer's feckless son? What does the policeman named Katt know that he doesn't want to share with the prisoner's lawyer? What happened to the Rolex? Did Freddie Cash know ex-con Vic Vagoda? Why was Judge Chancellor so set against Ryder's candidacy? Where did Vigoda get the two grand? If it all pertained to Lefty's case, Jake would be justified in looking for the answers. Does it?"--BOOK JACKET.Abramo, J. L. is the author of 'Clutching at Straws' with ISBN 9780312308506 and ISBN 0312308507.