From Publishers Weekly
Going down smooth and easy, the ninth Nick Polo adventure (following Vintage Polo, 1993) begins when a street person named Scratchy asks the San Francisco PI to check out three license plate numbers. Soon Scratchy is killed in a suspicious hit-and-run accident, leaving behind a lot of cash and a near-perfect fake Rolex watch. The license plates lead Polo to a member of the city's board of supervisors, a powerful Chinatown gangster and an ex-CIA agent whom Polo knows from his days on the police force. It's pretty clear that Scratchy died because he stumbled across some kind of smuggling operation-and that Polo will tie together the three suspects into a tidy little bundle. Nonetheless Kennealy keeps a firm grip on his readers with a smart pace and a light, intelligent tone that's never cute. We're also treated to intriguing lore about investigative procedures in the electronic age, scenic and historic bits and a lively background romance.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Scratchy, a San Francisco streetperson, asks private eye Nick Polo to run a license plate for him, contending that the car's owner is an especially generous supporter of his panhandling enterprise. It's good business, after all, to know your best customers by name. Polo, who volunteers at a soup kitchen Scratchy frequents, is skeptical but complies. Before he can relay the message to his client, Scratchy is dead, the victim of a hit-and-run driver. The plate Scratchy gave Polo traced to one Henry Lee, the Chinatown godfather, prompting the sleuth to keep poking around. When an arsonist torches Polo's home and nearly kills Mrs. Damonte, Polo's tenant and surrogate grandmother, it's obvious Scratchy's death was no accident. The ninth Polo mystery is a typically solid entry in the series--well written, plausible, and featuring, in Mrs. Damonte, one of the most enjoyable supporting characters in the genre. Kennealy is a real-life private eye so the details of surveillance and information gathering lend credibility to his mazelike plots.
Wes Lukowsky
