DEADLY BONES

A retired English teacher who had private-eye business cards printed up as a lark solves his second case.

After disposing of purloined Fabergé eggs in Scrambled Eggs (2005), Jake Wanderman, depressed and at loose ends since the sudden death of his wife, succumbs to the call for help from her best friend Toby. Toby’s dad Cormac Blather, an antiques dealer who specialized in art forgeries, lies dead on the floor of his Sag Harbor shop. The police seem stymied. Though she’s not anxious for his help, Det. Sienna Nolan lets Jake butt in. Soon the pair are calling on mega-rich art patron Bryson Mergenthaler, whose personal assistant handles most of their questions, particularly about a missing ossuary which purportedly held the bones of Jesus’ brother James. Also missing is the knife which filleted Cormac and his principal forger, Chase McCleod. Jake is tailed, assailed and thrown off the case by Sienna. On the advice of his father and his rabbi, he flies off to Jerusalem, where Russians await him, coshes in hand. When gorgeous Det. Liat suggests he go home, he returns, only to become the new target of Cormac’s killer. Lots of slicing and dicing later, Jake solves the case. Meanwhile, his depression has lifted, thank you, and Toby is casting amorous looks his way.

Heavy-handed plotting and a plethora of Shakespearean quotations—though Riskin does a fine job giving details about the laying on of tefillin.