A couple from US author, Brian M. Wiprud.
I read Wiprud's debut Sleep with the Fishes sometime between 2000 and 2009 and enjoyed it, without being blown away. I think when I bought that and these I was seeking something similar to a Carl Hiaasen vibe. I'm not sure that Fishes quite got there.
Twelve years is a long time, so I ought to give these a work out.
Pipsqueak (2002)
"...the wildest mystery to come down the pike in a stuffed squirrel's age." --Publishers Weekly
Crooked (2006)
Nicholas Palihnic is a natty, tweed-suited hustler who knows every nook and cranny of New York - and a thousand ways to break a girl's heart. Beatrice Belarus is a Manhattan art dealer with an insatiable appetite for money - and for anyone who gets in her way. And a painting titled Trampoline Nude, 1972 has neither nudity nor a trampoline. But when Nicholas is hired by an insurance company to find the recently stolen painting, a murdered art thief points him to a trove of gold buried beneath Manhattan - and suddenly all roads are leading back to Beatrice. As fortune hunters, lovers, and other strangers gather around him, there's one thing Nicholas must remember above all else: in this business, it's better to be crooked than dead....
These do sound like wild rides, Col. Sometimes that sort of madcap plot can work really well, so I hope you'll like these. I give credit to authors who can make a good story out off-the-wall sorts of plot threads like this. It's not easy!
ReplyDeleteMargot, I think I kind of judge madcap by comparing with Hiaasen and that sets the bar really high. I agree it's difficult to pull off.
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