Straight No Chaser

Classic Batten — on the rocks.

Jazz. Cocaine. Vietnamese triads. Dope-dealing yuppie lawyers. Jack Batten's got them all in his second mystery novel starring Crang, the unconventional criminal lawyer with a taste for straight vodka and a nose for trouble. This time out Crang is hired by his buddy Dave Goddard, a sax player whose playing style is from the fifties, but whose unwitting involvement in a complex coke-smuggling ring is pure eighties.

Crang's friendly offer to help Dave find out who is tailing him takes a reluctant sleuth into a series of unlikely locales: behind the scenes at Toronto's oh-so-chic film festival; into a triad-run afterhours boozecan; and into the gang's inner sanctum, the office of Big Bam, the ring's genial but deadly kingpin.

No one could ever accuse Crang of being a superhero, but with his usual mixture of innate cool and naive enthusiasm he brings the villains to justice and readers to the end of a cleverly entertaining romp that leaves us looking forward to Crang's next case.