Mortimer Angel

For nine long days, the mayor and district attorney of Reno, Nevada, have been missing. Vanished without a trace. Their vehicles were found parked side-by-side at Reno-Tahoe International Airport. Did they fly somewhere together? They aren't on any flight manifest. Did the two of them take off with a big pile of the city's money? If so, the city accountants can't find it. Were they murdered? There's no sign of foul play. Their disappearances have finally made national news. Enter Mortimer Angel, who'd just quit a thankless job as an IRS agent. Mort is Reno's newest gumshoe, a private-eye-in-training at his nephew's detective agency. Just four hours into his new career, Mort finds the mayor-make that, the mayor's head-in the trunk of Mort's ex-wife's Mercedes. The news-hungry media speculates: Did Mort kill the mayor? Did Mort's ex? As events begin to spin out of control, Mort realizes things have been out of control since the night before he started his new career, the night he found the unknown naked blonde in his bed.

In the style of Dashiell Hammett, ex-IRS agent turned gumshoe-in-training, Mortimer Angel, is approached by a beautiful hooker, Holiday, in a casino bar in Reno. Mort first met Holiday two months ago, but now learns that she's not really a hooker. She's a college engineering student, searching for her younger sister, Allie, who disappeared three months ago. Having seen Mort in the news, Holiday knows he's a PI who finds missing persons. While in the bar with Mort, Holiday gets an unexpected phone call from Allie, who says she's in Gerlach, a small town in Nevada. The call is cut off. Holiday hires Mort on the spot, dragging him off to Gerlach. When Mort finds a connection between Allie and US Senator Harry "Liar" Reinhart, a presidential candidate who vanished without a trace three days ago, things quickly turn deadly ... very deadly.

IRS agent-turned-PI Mortimer Angel is relaxing in a hole-in-the-wall bar in a Reno casino when an attractive young girl hires him to find out who left her a cryptic message demanding a million dollars. At the girl's house, Mort finds the body of missing rapper Jonnie Xenon-Jo-X to his legions of fans-hanging from the rafters with two bullet holes in him. Mort is shocked when he learns the identity of the girl's father-and even more shocked when the father hires him to investigate the murder. Mort, being Mort, accumulates a few felonies as he follows the clues to Las Vegas. And along the way, he picks up an alluring young assistant who changes his life-in every conceivable way.

Early in July, northern Nevada's senior Internal Revenue Service agent, Ronald Soranden-disliked by every agent in the Reno IRS office-vanished without a trace. In September, he makes a dramatic reappearance, of sorts. His skull-stripped clean and white-is dropped through the slashed top of a Mustang convertible. The vehicle belongs to Lucy Landry, PI Mortimer Angel's gorgeous young assistant now working with him on a seemingly unrelated embezzlement case. But Mort is a former IRS field agent in Reno. He'd done his time during the tyrannical reign of Soranden, quitting, he says, "when I discovered I have a soul." Now that his former boss's head has appeared, he and Lucy find them themselves under the annoying surveillance of a pair of IRS enforcement agents. When the FBI are brought in to investigate the murder, Mort and Lucy realize shocking details about their own case-primarily Soranden's involvement. It becomes evident that events and suspects of the embezzlement case and Soranden's murder are heavily entangled with those enmeshed in an ugly case of blackmail. Mort and Lucy are roped tighter and tighter into the Soranden investigation while they grapple with the deadliest situation of their PI careers. Mortimer Angel has been in harrowing, lethal situations before and has suffered incalculable losses, but none more horrifying than the trap embedded in Gumshoe Rock.

Blackmail, murder, and a pretty girl on the runNevada's attorney general is missing. At dusk on a deserted Nevada highway in a thunderstorm, ex-IRS agent and PI-in-training Mortimer Angel comes across a pretty, scantily-clad girl-Harper Leland. She's cold and alone, thirty miles from the nearest town. When Mort offers her a ride, she orders him out of his truck at gunpoint. She tries to take off, but he cuts the valve stem on the rear tire. Realizing she's in trouble, he wants to help-but with no spare tire, he devises a creative way to get them out of the hills-slowly, precariously balanced on three tires. On their way down, a rough-looking man stops and asks Mort if he has seen anyone up in the hills. Mort realizes the guy is after Harper, who is hiding in the truck. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse chase in northeast Nevada that continues even after Mort finds the attorney general-Harper's mother-dead in the trunk of a car. In time, Mort's wife, Lucy, is also pulled into the case, which becomes the deadliest of Mort's career.

These five novels in the Gumshoe Collection bring back the style of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler. Each one with a rock-solid core delivered with an explosive punch and snappy dialogue that sometimes may be risqué , but is always humorous. When ex-IRS Agent Mortimer- call me " Mort" - Angel launches his new gumshoe career, he immediately becomes Reno' s infamous finder of bodies and/or body parts. In Gumshoe, it' s the mayor' s missing head; in Gumshoe for Two, it' s the hand of a U.S. Senator; in Gumshoe on the Loose, it' s the hanging body of a missing rapper; in Gumshoe Rock, it' s a skull, stripped clean and white; in Gumshoe in the Dark, it' s the dead body of his female companion' s mother. PI-in-training-Mort definitely has a special knack, as does Rob Leininger, in delivering gritty crime novels sprinkled with spicy humor. All five books in the Gumshoe Collection are perfect for fans of Janet Evanovich, Carl Hiaasen, and Tim Dorsey