Greasing the Piñata

by Tim Maleeny

Overview

A former U.S. Senator vanishes days after his son goes missing. When they’re both found dead on a golf course in Mexico, body parts missing, the Senator’s estranged daughter Rachel resolves to discover what happened. Private investigator Cape Weathers doesn’t really want the case. He can’t stand politicians and doesn’t know the terrain. But when it looks like the daughter may become the next victim, Cape crosses the border looking for answers. Cape asks his deadly companion Sally, trained by the Hong Kong Triads, to watch his back as he stumbles onto a conspiracy that leads from corporate boardrooms in San Francisco to drug cartel strongholds in Mexico. Together they confront a killer determined to bury the past as well as anyone trying to dig it up. Miles away from home and nowhere near the answers, Cape manages to get kidnapped, steal from the mob, piss off the DEA, alienate the local police, confound a computer genius, and somehow lose the client he’s been protecting all along.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781615951185
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Series:	Cape Weathers Mysteries , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	803 KB

About the Author

Tim Maleeny is a San Francisco-based writer whose short stories appear in DEATH DO US PART, an anthology from Mystery Writers of America edited by Harlan Coben, and also Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

Editorial Reviews

Maleeny smoothly mixes wry humor and a serious plot without sacrificing either in his third Cape Weathers mystery (after 2007's Beating the Babushka). When Jim Dobbins, a recently retired California state senator, and his drug-addict son, Danny, disappear in Mexico, Dobbins's estranged daughter hires San Francisco reporter-turned-PI Weathers to find them. Weathers journeys south of the border only to learn that the mutilated bodies of father and son have surfaced in a Puerto Vallarte golf course's alligator-infested pond. Aided by his Triad-trained associate, Sally Mei, Weathers pursues a case that reaches from a Mexican drug cartel to the San Francisco mob as well as the city's boardrooms. An appealing hero, well-crafted villains, snappy dialogue and an energetic plot show that Maleeny, while not quite in the same league as Robert Crais or Laura Lippman, is a definite contender in the private detective subgenre. (Dec.)

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Publishers Weekly

When a U.S senator and his son are murdered in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, the senator's daughter hires intrepid San Francisco PI Cape Weathers (Stealing the Dragon; Beating the Babushka) to investigate. Cape finds that every road leads to political payoffs, financial machinations, crime bosses wanting to eliminate the competition, and a cracking good mystery. The repartee between Cape and his Asian Triad-trained assassin sidekick, Sally, offsets the violent and often casual killings of a number of characters. Definitely not for the faint of heart but just right for readers who like a gritty crime novel with a labyrinth of plot twists. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ8/08.]

—Jo Ann Vicarel

Library Journal

"Maleeny is the kind of writer that makes you want to jump in the passenger seat and go for the ride—okay, maybe with eyes jammed shut and your hands gripping the arm rest—but then you want to go again." — Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author

"Tim Maleeny nails it with this new installment from Cape Weathers. It's an intriguing murder mystery crossed with a fast-paced political thriller. The whole thing is tied together with a witty protagonist and a finely tuned sense of humor. In Greasing the Piñata, just as in Mexico, anything can happen, and most of it does." — Bill Fitzhugh, award-winning author of Pest Control

"Maleeny smoothly mixes wry humor and a serious plot without sacrificing either in his third Cape Weathers mystery...an appealing hero, well-crafted villains, snappy dialogue and an energetic plot." — Publishers Weekly

"A cracking good mystery definitely not for the faint of heart but just right for readers who like a gritty crime novel with a labyrinth of plot twists." — Library Journal

"The Cape Weathers novels are smart, snappily written, energetic mysteries starring an engaging hero." — Booklist

From the Publisher

Armando Durán's powerful characterizations of sardonic PI Cape Weathers and his associate, Sally Mei, are believable and compelling. Two missing-person cases take them to Mexico to find controversial California State Senator Jim Dobbins and his drug-addicted son. Durán depicts Dobbins's estranged daughter, who hires Weathers, with bittersweet sensitivity. With sardonic humor he portrays the discovery of two mutilated bodies in the alligator pond of a Puerto Vallarta golf course. Instead of closing the case, it sets the stage for more action—with warring drug lords, a terrifying assassin, and an enigmatic Mexican police inspector. Descriptive scenes of piranhas at work are not for the squeamish. Exceptionally well done. G.D.W.

© AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

MAY 2009 - AudioFile