The Steel Web - Hardcover

A new adventure for Indianapolis old-timer Deets Shanahan (The Stone Veil, 1989), the antithesis of trendy, who now sets out to prove that street-punks Leo and Billy did not bayonet to death Sam Puckett, a cop working undercover on a cocaine bust. With the sometime help of girlfriend Maureen and bar-crony Harry (who shakes a tail), Deets niggles away at magazine publisher/philanderer James Connell, who, for inexplicable reasons, is splashing stories of gang wars and killer punks across his pages, while at the same time prying into Sweethearts, a T&A bar with drug connections, whose manager is blown up in his car. Unraveling Puckett's drug connections is easy compared to uncovering his love life: Who was with him in Barbados? Several red herrings later, Leo and Billy are off the hook (thanks, in part, to a Puckett girlfriend) and Deets discovers the story behind the headlines. Fast-paced, wryly told, and evenly balanced--solid detection combined with warm, empathetic characterization. Besides, it's about time the Modern Maturity crowd had their own pinup. Who better than Deets? -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this new Deet Shanahan mystery, the gruff and lonely private investigator (who still lives with the furniture his ex-wife left behind 35 years before) is caught up in a case involving two 16-year-old boys arrested for the murder of an undercover cop. They had been on the scene and stole money from the dead man, but Shanahan and his much-younger girlfriend (whom he met in a massage parlor) don't believe the boys killed him. Time is short, because an ambitious, soon-to-be-up-for-reelection prosecutor wants the boys quickly convicted, to prove that Indianapolis, Ind., isn't New York or L.A. Before Shanahan discovers the murderer, he meets and matches wits with a wide assortment of characters: one of the richest and most powerful men in town, a young cub reporter, the owner of a strip joint with Mafia connections and his bimbo wife. With a smooth narrative style, vivid local color and sharply drawn characters, Tierney ( The Stone Veil ) offers a realistic portrait of an aging man and some satisfying sleuthing.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.