The paradise affair

In 1893, John Quincannon is a San Francisco PI and former Secret Service agent. He bears the fictional gumshoe's mark of Cain: once a ricochet from his gun killed a pregnant woman hanging out wash. His partner--his wife now, in the ninth book in the series--is former Pinkerton detective Sabrina Carpenter. She operates by "woman's wiles," which function much like inductive reasoning. They own a Bay Area detective agency and avoid the teasing question--Which of them is the smart one?--by having little to do with each other. John is chasing a couple of grifters, and when the trail leads to Hawaii, Sabrina tags along. Then they split. Quincannon hounds the flimflammers in the time-honored hard-boiled manner, interviewing sleazy people in sleazy surroundings, while Sabrina is invited into a luscious mystery. She's nearby when the gunshot sounds. The victim was "alone in his study, the door and both windows locked." Suddenly we have a classic Golden Age mystery, with Sabrina to figure it out. It's Marlowe alternating with Poirot, an unusual and welcome mix.

Set in 1898, MWA Grand Master Pronzini's routine ninth mystery featuring San Francisco PIs Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon (after 2020's The Stolen Gold Affair) takes the married couple to Hawaii in pursuit of Jackson "Lonesome Jack" Vereen and E.B. Nagle (aka Nevada Ned), who duped an Oakland, Calif., businessman into investing thousands in a nonexistent silver mine. Quincannon focuses on tracking down the two grifters, a task that leads him to investigating multiple murders. Meanwhile, Carpenter becomes involved in a howdunit after Gordon Pettibone, the owner of an import-export bank, is found dead behind a locked door in his study. A loaded pistol next to Pettibone's corpse makes accident or suicide the logical explanation. Carpenter probes deeper, but her efforts to show how someone could have entered the sealed room don't generate much excitement. Pronzini has been better at evoking a past time and place. Series fans invested in the leads are most likely to appreciate this one. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Jan.)