LULLABY TOWN

Lullaby Town is Chelam, Connecticut, where L.A. shamus Elvis Cole (The Monkey's Raincoat, 1987—not reviewed) goes in search of Karen Shipley, divorced ten years earlier by boyish filmmaker Peter Alan Nelsen, who's since developed deep pockets (courtesy of a string of action hits beginning with Chainsaw) and a conscience of sorts. Just when it looks like EMs has found Karen and her son, Toby, all too easily, Karen turns out to be laundering money for the Mafia, and the story takes off like a two-stage rocket. It'll take all of Elvis's wise-guy savvy to pry Karen loose from those other wise-guys without condemning her to the witness-protection program or the East River. Elvis is as sharp as a West Coast Spenser, but without Speaser's nasty/noble attitudinizing—and this story is pure pleasure from the very first page.