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Zusatztext Praise for the Junior Bender Series "Timothy Hallinan's The Fame Thief has everything I've come to expect in a Hallinan novel: indelible! complex characters! fantastic plot! and moments of hold-your-breath suspense." —Charlaine Harris! author of the New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse series “A modern-day successor to Raymond Chandler.” — Los Angeles Daily News "If Carl Hiaasen and Donald Westlake had a literary love child! he would be Timothy Hallinan. The Edgar nominee's laugh-out-loud new crime series featuring Hollywood burglar-turned-private eye Junior Bender has breakout written all over it... A must-read." —Julia Spencer-Fleming! New York Times bestselling author of One Was a Soldier "Junior Bender is today’s Los Angeles as Raymond Chandler might have written it. Tim [Hallinan] is a master at tossing out the kind of hard-boiled lines that I wish I thought of first." —Bruce DeSilva! Macavity & Edgar Award-winning author of Rogue Island “This is Hallinan at the top of his game. It's laugh-out-loud funny without ever losing any of its mystery. It’s a whole new style and I love it. Junior Bender—a crook with a heart of gold—is one of Hallinan's most appealing heroes! rich with invention! and brimming with classic wit. I can’t recommend it highly enough.” —Shadoe Stevens! Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson “Hallinan is a stunning talent.” —Gregg Hurwitz! author of They're Watching ss Informationen zum Autor Timothy Hallinan Klappentext Hollywood burglar-turned-detective Junior Bender has a knotty new case to solve-a 60-year-old Tinseltown mystery There are not many people brave enough to say no to Irwin Dressler! Hollywood's infamous mob boss-turned-movie king. Even though Dressler is ninety-three years old! Junior Bender is quaking in his boots when Dressler's henchmen haul him in for a meeting. Dressler wants Junior to solve a "crime" he believes was committed more than seventy years ago! when an old friend of his! once-famous starlet Dolores La Marr! had her career destroyed after compromising photos were taken of her at a Las Vegas party. Dressler wants justice for Dolores and the shining career she never had. Junior can't help but think the whole thing is a little crazy. After all! it's been sixty years. Even if someone did set up Dolores for a fall from grace back then! they're probably long dead. But he can't say no to Irwin Dressler (no one can! really). So he starts digging. And what he finds is that some vendettas never die-they only get more dangerous. 1 My business plan calls for long periods of inactivity Irwin Dressler crossed one eye-agonizing plaid leg over the other, leaned back on a white leather couch half the width of the Queen Mary, and said, “Junior, I’m disappointed in you.” If Dressler had said that to me the first time I’d been hauled up to his Bel Air estate for a command appearance, I’d have dropped to my knees and begged for a painless death. He was, after all, the Dark Lord in the flesh. But now I’d survived him once, so I said, “Well, Mr. Dressler—“ A row of yellow teeth, bared in what was supposed to be a smile but looked like the last thing many small animals see. “Call me Irwin.” “Well, Mr. Dressler, at the risk of being rowed into the center of the Hollywood Reservoir wired to half a dozen cinder blocks and being offered the chance to swim home, what have I done to disappoint you?” “Nothing. That’s the problem.” Despite the golf slacks and the polo shirt, Dressler was old without being grandfatherly, old without going all dumpling, old without getting quaint. He’d been a dangerous young man in 1943, when he assumed control of mob ac...
