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(More customer reviews)I got fooled. Big time.
Tim Maleeny's breakout book, STEALING THE DRAGON, introduced Cape Weathers to the world of noir detective fiction. One of the more impressive elements of that standout work was his use of San Francisco's Chinatown --- the real Chinatown, not the wide avenues where the tourist buses run --- as a dark backdrop to his complex, enthralling mystery. When I heard that Maleeny's second Cape Weathers novel was to be titled BEATING THE BABUSHKA, my initial thought was something along the order of "Wow! That's great! It will be set in Russian Hill!" I used to live in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood, and since occasionally and unfortunately I operate under the assumption that everything is all about me, I just couldn't wait to revisit my old neighborhood through the eyes of Weathers and Maleeny.
As things develop, however, the book's setting is not Russian Hill. Surprisingly enough, it isn't really set entirely in San Francisco. And that is only the beginning of the surprises that Maleeny plants here. He is a wonderfully strong and confident writer, and other than bringing a couple of supporting characters with him from STEALING THE DRAGON, this is a very different story from its predecessor.
BEATING THE BABUSHKA begins with Weathers being retained to investigate what looks to all the world to be a suicide. Tom Abrahams, who is in San Francisco producing an epic disaster movie for Empire Films, falls to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge. Grace Calloway, Abrahams's co-producer and former lover, is convinced that his death was involuntary. Weathers, though not entirely sure that Abrahams didn't jump on his own, agrees to look into the matter. His curiosity is aroused one hundredfold when a couple of very dangerous gentlemen with Eastern European accents bluntly tell him to disengage himself from the investigation, an instruction that naturally causes Weathers to dig his heels into the ground and begin nosing around.
Weathers has a small but interesting group of folks along to help him --- Linda, a reporter; Beau, a San Francisco homicide detective; Sally, an indispensable martial arts expert; and The Sloth. The Sloth is one of the most interesting supporting characters you're likely to encounter in a contemporary work of fiction --- his very nature keeps him from being used to carry an entire novel --- but Maleeny wisely uses him sparingly, though to great effect. It is worth reading a Weathers story just to encounter The Sloth, who combines a significant personality disorder with an uncanny computer genius.
Weathers and the reader learn quite a bit about the politics and financing of filmmaking, as Weathers's investigation begins to dovetail into a series of bizarre and grisly deaths involving some lesser players in the San Francisco underworld. Weathers literally will go cross-country to solve this case before it is all over, putting himself in deadly jeopardy, escaping with aplomb and wisecracking his way through at least some situations while tap-dancing his way out of others.
Maleeny is an entertaining storyteller who combines elements of noir detective fiction with occasional bits of humor to create a character, and a series, of wide, deep and far-reaching appeal. BEATING THE BABUSHKA goes a long way toward establishing Maleeny as one of the new princes of detective fiction.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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