The Runaway Man - David Handler

Now this book did come with its book jacket, so I knew what I was getting into. Big-time lawyer approaches small-time family detective agency to track down a college kid that's gone into hiding and give him a lot of money. Who does the lawyer work for? He won't say. Why do they want to give the kid the money? He won't say. Sounds hinky, but as is usually the case, the shamuses are in no financial situation to turn down the money. Things go sideways from there.

So, fairly standard detective story, albeit set in the early 2010s rather than the 1940s. The main character is a baby-faced mid-20s kid named Benji, rather than a hard-drinking, hard-smoking archetype. He still seems to be irresistible to women, as apparently no less than three characters in the book express interest, ranging from a 17-year-old high school girl, to the mid-30s former exotic dancer than acts as the agency's tech support/receptionist.

As much time as Handler spends describing breasts, you'd be surprised Benji finds the time to do any actual work on the case, but he does. There's no choice, the book moves at a brisk clip. He finds the kid (and the first dead body) in the first 60 pages. More bodies drop shortly after, and in between Benji's being interrogated by cops, going on interviews with cops, having dinner with a kindergarten teacher he met at temple, attending funerals. Handler just doesn't waste much time. Typically even when Benji is beating himself up about a mistake or being flirted with, the plot is still moving forward somehow.

I had an inkling of the killer maybe halfway through, and the reason why the first victim was killed around the same time. On the latter point, I chalk it up to my having watched a lot of Midsomer Murders lately, so the twist about the kid's parentage was one my mind unfortunately went to very easily.

So I don't know if I would call it a difficult mystery, but if you figure the book is more about Hadley writing a noir in a more modern setting, then that may not be as big a deal. Those are usually about a certain vibe, the powerful trying to cover their asses through money or violence, expecting others to take the fall. This isn't nearly as depressing an ending as a lot of noirs, but sometimes it's better not to end with, "there's no justice or comeuppance in this world."

'Legs listened without comment until I got to the part where Bobby had hinted that the Grayson political machine might be behind the deaths of Bruce and Kathleen. "Wait, he told you that his dead sister was a teen skank and he threw his own wife under the bus?"

"Pretty much."

"Whoa, he's some cutie."'