Angel’s Gate: A Shortcut Man Novel

At the outset of Sturges’s uneven third crime novel featuring L.A. fixer and ex-cop Dick Henry (after 2012’s The Tribulations of the Shortcut Man), Henry gets a disbarred attorney, who owes a client $3,300, to pay up by threatening to expose that he’s practicing law without a license. But first Henry urinates on a ficus plant in the man’s office. Henry later employs a contact with horrific body odor to prevent another client from being scammed. Such humorous moments bring some relief from the many unpleasant people and their sordid crimes that preoccupy Henry in the course of the book—beginning with a psychotic and megasuccessful Hollywood director, who beats up, tortures, and then uses a gun to sodomize an unsuccessful actress. Fans of the screwball comedies made by the author’s celebrated film director father, Preston Sturges, will note that the son has taken a different path. Agent: Ryan Fischer-Harbage, the Fischer-Harbage Agency. (Feb. 26)