The Wheel of Doll
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- USD 5.99
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- USD 5.99
Descripción editorial
'An adept purveyor of the very noir' The Times
A NAME FROM THE PAST
When Mary DeAngelo walks into Happy Doll's office, she brings with her the scent of sandalwood perfume, a whole lot of cash, and the name of his old flame: Ines Candle.
LURES HAPPY INTO A TRAP
Ines is living rough up in Washington State, and Mary wants her found. Happy hits the streets to track her down, but soon he realizes he has been used. Now somebody is hunting them.
CAN HE FIGHT HIS WAY OUT?
Soon two people are dead, and Happy is in big trouble. But he's been here before and he knows that the only way to be safe is to get even...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hard-boiled PI fiction set in the present doesn't get much better than Ames's gritty and moving second novel featuring L.A. gumshoe Happy Doll (after 2021's A Man Named Doll). Doll revisits his past when he gets a new client, Mary DeAngelo, who hires him to find her missing mother, last seen in Olympia, Wash. Mary explains that she's approached Doll, rather than an Olympia investigator, because her mother, Ines Candle, was briefly Doll's girlfriend. Doll hasn't seen Ines, a troubled soul whom the detective saved from a wrist-slitting suicide attempt, for years, but the pleasurable moments they shared prompts him to accept the case. What Doll finds when he gets to Olympia is depressing and leads to multiple murders. The Raymond Chandler–esque plot is enhanced by superior prose: a handshake is described as "a violent squeeze, the kind that religious zealots or football coaches give, to show you they're real men, men of strength, with an undercurrent of sadism." Devotees of Loren Estleman's long-running PI Amos Walker series will hope Doll has a similarly enduring career.
