Rich or Dead

Lost Daughter and Red Winter won Cormany raves that will echo for the author's third thriller. The narrator is pill-popping, hard-drinking PI Dan Kruger of Chicago's slums. When Elvia Reyes pays Dan to recover a bag of money she claims her brother Ricardo stole from her, the assignment branches into several increasingly complicated and gory incidents. The investigator finds Ricardo murdered and the money gone, with Elvia affected only by her frantic need to get back the loot, which she herself had stolen in the first place. Prodding Kruger, the tough woman makes him her ally in the hunt. Together they find the elusive treasure in a hair-raising encounter that ends this savagely humorous, racy story about outcasts who arouse compassion, their poverty so all-consuming that it allows no such luxuries as moral standards. (Apr.)