DESERT DEADLINE

A desert-based duo works the case of a murdered author in Craft’s mystery novel.

Dante O’Donnell is the VIP concierge at Sunny Junket Vacation Rentals, helping his famous and wealthy guests get the most out of their stays in Palm Springs. When private eye Jazz Friendly—who previously helped Dante get out of a very tight spot—asks him to hook up a friend of a friend with a place to stay, Dante is happy to oblige. The client in question is famed, reclusive romance novelist Maude Movay, who needs a quiet hideaway where she can finish the final book in a bestselling series. Jazz loves Maude’s work, and Dante is able to set the author up with a lavish guesthouse in a gated community, with everything she needs to bang out the manuscript in a month’s time. Unfortunately, Maude—who turns out to look nothing like her author photo—ends up dead, with a cryptic final message in her typewriter: “To Jazz Friendly, my dearest chum and most devoted reader. Yours forever, Maude Movay.” Jazz and Dante spring into action to solve the murder, which involves a massive, multimillion-dollar streaming video deal implicating a number of interested parties. When someone close to Jazz gets caught up in the crime, the case goes from high-profile whodunit to personal tragedy. The author’s prose is arch and energetic: Dante regards the dead author’s lawyer, observing, “it wasn’t just the fatigue that had taken a toll—the puffy red eyes behind her huge red glasses suggested a recent crying jag, and her twisted features made me wonder if she was on the verge of another.” It’s fun to see Craft, the author of 19 novels, plot the demise of a writer’s block–plagued author, which he does with typical ingenuity and precision. The setting and characters are well drawn, and the reader ends the novel anticipating future Dante and Jazz cases.

A satisfying entry in the expanding Palm Springs–based detective series.