VOYEUR

A jittery shamus opts for a life without peeping but finds that the past won’t stay put.

Remer, once a big-time, big-city private eye who’s lost whatever first name he ever had, rethinks his vocation after a searing experience scares him silly, scars him permanently and generates intimations of mortality. Self-exiled from Manhattan, he plants roots in Southampton, where the nice little liquor store he owns helps him sleep better at night. In addition, he acquires lovely Angela, a girlfriend bred in the bone for sympathy, understanding and such undemanding sex that she too helps him sleep better at night. But Remer’s past catches up with him in the form of Mia Ferrara, the never-quite-renounced love of his life who’d left him flat, vanishing with $80,000 of hard-earned cash from his liquor business. Now, according to Mia’s mother, she’s disappeared again. Will Remer return to sleuthing long enough to track her down? If he’s successful, Mrs. Ferrara will pony up the stolen money. With some reluctance Remer signs on, mounts an investigation and, of course, finds himself back in the world he’d been at such pains to escape: chicanery, murder, generalized mayhem and, worst of all, possible betrayal. Is Remer being set up? And by Mia?

Judson (The Violet Hour, 2009, etc.) is a thoroughly accomplished writer. Still, the plot is noticeably underdone. For connoisseurs of style over substance.