BOYSTOWN

A 21st-century Philip Marlowe blithely soldiers on.

Now that wisecracking LA shamus Jack Liffey is down—but not out—after open heart surgery and a stroke, his girlfriend, Gloria, is on hand to assist in his recuperation. So is his daughter, Maeve, who wants his help in finding her roommate Bunny’s missing brother, Benjy, who was last seen at a gay rights rally. Maeve has yet to identify Bunny as her girlfriend, but it’s not exactly a secret. While Jack’s hobbling to the lunch table, a Ukrainian Jew named Petro Ivanchuk Pogorelets is chasing butterflies in the Eastern Sierras, dangerously close to a small group of hunters led by the arrogant Zeke Tomlin. In an effort to impress his friends, Zeke shoots Petro, who falls but uses his butterfly net as a hiking pole to escape. All this unfolds in the brisk opening chapter of Shannon’s 15th Liffey novel, which jumps round-robin fashion in short cuts between multiple locations. The deft juggling of multiple characters and plotlines, bolstered by a mastery of the sharp one-liner, makes Shannon’s long-running series compulsively readable. Keeping up with every new character and twist is challenging but rewarding. It doesn’t matter that the other members of the hunting party want to distance themselves from Zeke, who’s clearly tangled with the wrong lepidopterist. When Petro teams up with the super-shady Sergei, who lives off the grid, sweet vengeance is on the menu in an homage to Reservoir Dogs. Will Gloria’s vengeance be equally severe when she learns that Jack’s slept with the gritty intellectual Yana?

A lively private eye caper with a delightfully diverse cast.