All That Glitters
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Nick Polo’s latest case finds him on familiar San Francisco turf where a Russian antiques dealer has hired him to locate Anna, the stunning holder of a valuable Mongol paitza—a dog tag of sorts—originally worn by Ogodie Khan. Using no more than a defunct phone number and a grainy photograph of Anna, Polo soon catches up with the paitza's guardian.
But before he can bring Anna and the treasure to his client, a rival investigator who is also hunting for the paitza winds up on a U.S. Army Fort with a slit throat. To catch the murderer and retrieve the Mongol badge, Nick must out-maneuver a United States Park Police officer, tanning salon prostitutes, military intelligence agents, and a shady German Consulate attache.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While it's a pleasant enough exercise to hang out with San Francisco PI Nick Polo (seen most recently in 1994's Beggar's Choice), this feather-light case is seldom fully engaging. Worse, by the conclusion, the narrative lapses into downright sloppiness. Polo is hired to tail a mysterious Russian woman who claims to be in possession of an ancient Greek coin that once belonged to the son of Genghis Kahn. The woman also turns out to possess several names, and she moonlights as an escort for an agency specializing in providing pretty and expensive girls from the former Soviet Union. Along the way, Polo gets to frequent Lickie's Massage Parlor; fend off the latest lusty young niece pushed at him by his tenant, an old Italian woman; meet shady antique dealers and even shadier government-trained PIs. Oh, yes, he also has a near-death experience. Kennealy doesn't put a lot of effort into maintaining the logic of his plot, but his agreeably light tone carries the story forward--except when Polo indulges in longwinded laments for the spiritual death of San Francisco.
