Last Ditch
A Leo Waterman Mystery
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In Leo Waterman, writer G.M. Ford has created a private detective who tackles cases armed with strong survival instincts--and a deadly sense of humor. In his fifth outing, Seattle's most uncompromising sleuth finds that the laughs are all on him after making a startling discovery at home.
P.I. Leo Waterman is unflappable, irrepressible and unpredictable--a guy who, when facing adversity, would rather throw a punchline than a punch. As the son of one of Seattle's most colorful political figures, Leo Knows the city like no one else. Barely operating within the bothersome confines of the law, Leo manages to bend the rules via a dash of urbane charm, backed-up by a mild threat of mutual blackmail.
Recently, Leo has put aside the ghosts of his childhood to take up residence in his deceased parents' newly renovated mansion, which he now shares with his girlfriend, forensic specialist Rebecca Duvall. Domestic tranquility is the ideal, but this is Leo Waterman's home--where a simple chore can lead to disaster.
To clean up the neglected backyard, Leo calls upon his most trusted allies, "the Boys," a tenacious collective of hapless barflies whose pension checks arrive care of a low-rent ginmill. but as they tear down a dilapidated greenhouse, the motley wrecking crew uncovers a human skeleton that belongs to Leo's late father's most despised enemey: a muck-raking, ultra-conservative journalist who vanished twenty years ago. With the evidence stacked against "Wild Bill" Waterman, his son feels compelled to clear his name by digging up the past--and trying not to get buried beneath it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's hard work trying to keep a series fresh, and in Ford's fifth novel about Seattle private detective Leo Waterman (Slow Burn, etc.) the strain shows. Most of the recurring jokes--about Leo's powerful family and their embarrassment about his work, about his dysfunctional Fiat and his animosity toward the police department--fall flat. Even the Boys, the band of homeless drunks Waterman supports and employs from time to time, aren't quite as engaging anymore. When the 30-year-old remains of a gay-bashing, right-wing newspaper columnist named Peerless Price turn up on the grounds of the mansion belonging to Leo's late father, politician Wild Bill Waterman, it begins to look as if Wild Bill had shot his arch enemy. Because both his starchy uncle Pat and the Seattle PD warn him against it, Leo risks life, limb and ancient convertible to prove his father's innocence. What he finds out--from Wild Bill's old driver and other ghosts from the past (including an earless Oriental phantom straight out of Sax Rohmer; see the review of The Revenge of Kali-Ra, below)--proves more bizarre than exciting.
