cover image Closing Costs

Closing Costs

Thomas Bunn. Henry Holt & Company, $0 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-1073-2

In his third appearance ( Worse Than Death ), PI Jack Bodine has left his Michigan locale for Washington, D.C., where his partner Ed Quinn lies dying of cancer in a cheap motel. He's had himself kidnapped from the hospital and, to ease the pain, has arranged for a steady supply of heroin to be provided by a pair of stereotypical black thugs. Bodine arrives with Henry Gibbs, Quinn's lawyer, who insists that the dying man, who has changed his will so he can afford the drug, has been duped out of a valuable piece of property. Also on the scene is Tim Cooney, Quinn's young assistant who was chief inheritor before the will was altered. Gibbs is soon found dead of a heart attack in the trunk of a car, accompanied by Cooney, who could possibly have saved him. Questions of Cooney's real identity complicate a convoluted plot, already burdened with inessential details, that includes another murder, slight doses of wit, little more suspense and an even smaller payoff. A disappointing effort. (Oct.)