Laughing Dog

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable and well-plotted
Review:
This is the second, and seemingly last, of a series featuring hard-boiled fiftyish cop-turned-PI Leo 'Bloodhound' Bloodworth and his quirky, nerdish 15 year old assistant (parasite, as Bloodworth might describe her) Serendipity 'Sarah' Dahlquist. As in the first book, the chapters are narrated alternately by the two (although there is no longer the pretense that it is a book cobbled together by merged publishers from two manuscripts), an effective Rashomon-like telling of the story in two distinct voices.

There are also two separate cases. In one, pursued by Sarah, a New Orleans investigator seeks their aid after another L.A.-area PI he had hired turns up dead. Bloodworth, meanwhile, takes the seemingly simple assignment of recovering a stolen pair of earings for an aging star, who he never actually meets, a quest that soon leads him to Italy in pursuit of the thief. It would destroy too much of the fun to detail any further how these cases work out, the perils faced, and the connections which gradually become apparent.

This book is a good read, interestingly plotted, but the ultimate scheme which ties the plotlines together is over-the-top silly. Serendipity is a particularly engaging character, almost coming to the level of Heinlein's Holly Jones (also 15, in "The Menace From Earth") as a teen girl-geek. I read this one first, but immediately went out and found a copy of the first volume, "Sleeping Dog", which is near the top of my stack.