GoodReads meta-data is 287 pages rated by 3.81 by 332 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: Vroom!
Serendipity Dahlquist, aged almost thirteen, uses her roller blades to good effect, to rescue ageing PI Leo from an unhappy client. Precocious does not begin to describe Serendipity. She reads a lot, and thinks more, and as curious, fearless, and street smart as only a tweenager can be.
The client was not even Leo’s but his office mate’s. The two are not partners but split the rent on the office, as Leo tries to explain to everyone but no one cares about this fine point. Their names are on the door of the Bradley Building office and that makes them partners. Period! Then Leo’s oily office mate/partner is murdered, and, well, a PI has to do what a PI has to do in the screenplay.
What follows is a pastiche of The Maltese Falcon (1940) as this odd couple — the precocious Serendipity with the battered Leo — look for a lost dog while by-passing Serendipity’s long errant mother. Her grandmother is in loco parentis but largely preoccupied with her career as a regular in a daytime television soap opera until a wall falls on her. How could that happen? Good question.
The plot concerns, ahem, illegal dog fighting and is just as unpleasant as it sounds. Leo and Serendipity meet a lot of deplorable enthusiasts for this bloodsport, and one sheriff who has made his mission in office to eradicate this disgusting exhibition on his turf. There are some vivid characterisations, like the hapless Botolo brothers, though their sister seems to have interchangeable names, Constanzia and Consuela. The body count is high, and not just dogs.
The plot is perfectly tied up in the best Ross Macdonald fashion, and the text even includes a nod to one of his titles for the cognoscenti. But what the plot does not reconcile is Groucho the dog, why he was taken in the first place with that reference to money.
First in an all too short series. Arf!