The Harry Chronicles: A Mystery

This nimble, award-winning novel (1994 Best First Mystery contest sponsored jointly by St. Martin's Press and the Private Eye Writers of America) is set in a part of Fort Lauderdale that tourists rarely see. The personable Harry Rice, who supports his penchant for detection by running the kind of bar that respectable PIs past and present would happily call their own, is a glib wisecracker, whose unlucky love life and solo walks on the beach mark him as a soulful type, too. His difficult new client, the middle-aged but well-put together Eloise Loftus, is holding out on him. She says she wants him to find a valuable gun collection that she claims was stolen from her apartment during a physically impossible heist. But her husband scares Harry off the trail. So does a sultry redhead who both piques Harry's curiosity and delivers a highly professional warning to back off the case. Then the husband turns up murdered and Harry becomes a suspect. While many of the supporting cast are PI-territory indigenes and Harry himself has caricature moments, Pedrazas proves himself a sure-handed storyteller with an engaging voice. (Sept.)