Tipping the Valet: A Workplace Mystery

A canny sense of humor and timing elevate Beck’s series opener about a naïve Seattle valet-parking attendant’s brush with Russian mafiosi. All Tyler Benson wants to do is complete his undergraduate courses at the University of Washington, collect generous tips from his valet job at a posh Seattle restaurant, and keep his alcoholic father, Roger, from embarrassing him at work. But when Roger shows up—wearing Ugg slippers no less—on the same night that there’s a drive-by shoot-out at the restaurant, things get complicated: Tyler finds a gun. Roger loses a slipper. A dead body turns up in the trunk of a car that was parked in the restaurant parking lot. And, in a seemingly unrelated subplot, expensive cars are going missing and one of Tyler’s coworkers brags about his “other business interests.” Beck (Bad Neighbors) is masterly in pulling all these madcap threads together even as the rollicking suspense threatens to careen out of control (but never does). [em](Sept.) [/em]