Amazon.com
A former priest and now a practicing lawyer in Chicago, David J. Walker obviously knows a thing or two about how people behave. That knowledge enlivened his books about a private eye called Mal Foley (Applaud the Hollow Ghost), and now adds pleasure and promise to the start of a new series. Kirsten and Dugan are a married couple who met at the police academy; she's now a law-school dropout working as a private investigator, while he's taken over his father's lucrative but depressing personal-injury law practice. "She knew Dugan enjoyed his self-crafted image as a slightly tarnished, run-of-the-mill lawyer who exhausted his store of courage by sparring with insurance adjusters on the telephone. A comfortable image, and maybe he was tempted to believe in it. But the fact was that Dugan never backed off from any real challenge."
That admiration is mutual, so Dugan lets himself be dragged along by Kirsten on a case involving a sleazy lawyer about to be disbarred, a mobbed-up adult bookstore called Cousin Freddy's, and a missing exotic dancer known as Rita Ranchero. Both lead characters have distinct and well-developed personalities that mesh and occasionally clash, just like real couples we all know. If Walker can avoid a certain tendency toward coyness, this could be the beginning of a long and interesting relationship. --Dick Adler
From Booklist
With the panache of Nick and Nora, PI Kirsten Dugan and her lawyer-husband (known simply as "Dugan") take their place on the roster of chic, cosmopolitan husband-and-wife detecting teams. The two find themselves embroiled in one tough case when their friend, soon-to-be-disbarred lawyer Larry Candle, asks for their help defending the owners of a pornographic bookstore in an anti-obscenity case. But when the bookstore's cashier is shot dead, and Dugan and Kirsten see the killers running from the store, the case suddenly becomes more complicated. Through a messy investigation of Mafiosos, exotic dancers, crooked lawyers, pedophiles, drug smuggling, and money laundering, the pair manage to keep their keen sense of humor and deep affection for each other intact. Also the creator of PI Mal Foley, Walker offers up an eye-popping plot, wacky characters, oddball humor, and, best of all, the delightful Dugans in a story that's fresh, funny, and thoroughly entertaining. Emily Melton
