PELIKAN: Love, Redemption & Felony Theft A Novel of the French Quarter

Riverside, New Jersey, U.S.A.: Simon & Schuster, 1999. 1st ed., with complete number line beginning with 1. Fine in dust jacket with protective mylar cover. Set in and around New Orleans. "The storys narrated, after a fashion, by 30ish Charlie Curtis, a dealer in collectibles whos sent to New Orleans by his dying father to locate Charlies uncle James Joseph Pelikan, a nefarious crimelord who committed the further impropriety of stealing the (older) woman callow young Charlie loved, in the days when his uncle had raised him, among the Queen Citys inviting saloons and whorehouses. Back in New Awlins, Charlie rapidly disappears into the citys mean and humid underground, having unfortunately witnessed a murder committed by a naked, hairless womanfor which act hell become the prime suspect (a setup arranged by Uncle J.J., as a means of involving Charlie in the complex heist hes planning). All pretense of sequential narrative and common sense is blithely abandoned, as Martinwriting in a farcical tough-guy vein that evokes Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard as much as Hammett and Chandler,populates his tale with a raffish parade of broadly drawn grotesques..." -- Kirkus Review. 1st Ed. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. Book.