Monday, March 12, 2012

Party Doll - Steve Brewer




Steve Brewer's Bubba Mabry books are some of the best private eye novels of the past twenty years, and Bubba is back in PARTY DOLL, a very worthwhile addition to the series.

In this one, Bubba is hired by the owner of the Pink Pony strip club to find a missing dancer who goes by the name Joy Forever. Bubba goes about the job pretty efficiently and actually finds his quarry in fairly short order. But that's just the beginning, because someone involved in the case winds up dead, Bubba winds up in trouble with both the law and the shady characters from the strip club, and to save his own hide he has to untangle the threads of a complicated case involving corruption, infidelity, blackmail, and murder.

As always with Brewer's work, the prose is smooth and fast and very enjoyable to read. Bubba's voice is one of the most appealing in mystery fiction. Unlike the classic lone wolf PI, Bubba is married, and his relationship with his wife, investigative reporter Felicia Quattlebaum, is another of the strengths of this series.

If you haven't read any of the Bubba Mabry novels before, PARTY DOLL is a fine place to start. If you have, you'll certainly want to read this one, too. I liked it a lot. Highly recommended.

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