From Publishers Weekly
In his 24th book, counting the five he has written as Oliver Beech, Thomas ( Twilight at Mac's Place ; The Fourth Durango ) is in top form; this thriller is stuffed with incident, lively characters and sophisticated wit. On New Year's morning 1991 movie star Ione Gamble is found passed out in the Malibu home of her ex-fiance, a producer who had jilted her. She's holding, and has fired, a gun, killing him, but she can't remember anything because she was wildly drunk the night before. To determine what happened, her lawyer hires an English brother-sister team of hypnotists, who vanish before revealing what they may have gleaned from Gamble. Then the lawyer hires Enno Glimm, specialist in hiring specialists, who hires London-based Americans Artie Wu and Quincy Durant of Wudu, Ltd. And they hire their own helpers: con man Maurice "Otherguy" Overby, academic Booth Stallings and Georgia Blue, a former U.S. Secret Service agent just sprung from five years in a Philippine jail (met before in Out on the Rim ). Once the characters assemble in L.A., the plot takes off, touching down for murder, blackmail, discreet kinky sex and even incest. To this exhilarating, splendidly choreographed caper, Thomas provides a very satisfying ending, capped by a wonderful final line. Not to be missed. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Artie Wu and Quincy Durant, the principal soldiers-of-fortune in WuDu, Ltd. (Out on the Rim, 1987), are called in to mop up the mess when Hollywood star Ione Gamble is accused of killing her sometime producer/fianc‚ Billy Rice. Gamble's go-between, Enno Glimm, doesn't expect Wu and Durant to vindicate his client legally; he wants them to track down a pair of fly-by-night hypnotherapists who promised to find out whether Gamble could remember anything about the fatal New Year's Eve without reporting directly back to the police. Now they've skedaddled with every indication of having made incriminating videotapes of Gamble revealing all under hypnosis--tapes they're willing to peddle either to Gamble or to the highest-bidding tabloid. Assembling a team that includes aging spymaster Booth Stallings, con man Maurice ``Otherguy'' Overby, and former Secret Service agent Georgia Blue, just getting sprung from a Manila prison, Wu and Durant head out to Malibu and flex their tentacles: Stallings and Blue rent Rice's beach house; Wu puts Gamble into another trance; Otherguy puts out the word that he's looking for nasty videotapes; and the team rents innumerable plush autos they drive to motels where they discover more corpses and predict a final calamity that somehow never arrives. The effortless expertise of WuDu is all a little foolish, of course, but it's hard not to devour the whole outlandish tale at a sitting with a contented smile. Murder, blackmail, double-crossing galore--it all adds up to a delightfully relaxed canter around WuDu's track. --
Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
