Beating the Babushka

My first Tim Maleeny book and I have another author to add to my short favorite list. Page one hooked me and I stayed there until the end. Suspense and humor...great combination.

After just two books, Tim Maleeny has quickly become one of my favorite authors and Cape Weathers one of my favorite sleuths. Beating the Babushka once again teams Cape up with the deadly and beautiful assassin Sally, taking them from the west coast to the east and back again in a hair raising adventure. Beating the Babushka is well written, colorful, and extremely entertaining.

I got fooled. Big time. Tim Maleeny's breakout book, STEALING THE DRAGON, introduced Cape Weathers to the world of noir detective fiction. One of the more impressive elements of that standout work was his use of San Francisco's Chinatown --- the real Chinatown, not the wide avenues where the tourist buses run --- as a dark backdrop to his complex, enthralling mystery. When I heard that Maleeny's second Cape Weathers novel was to be titled BEATING THE BABUSHKA, my initial thought was something along the order of "Wow! That's great! It will be set in Russian Hill!" I used to live in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood, and since occasionally and unfortunately I operate under the assumption that everything is all about me, I just couldn't wait to revisit my old neighborhood through the eyes of Weathers and Maleeny. As things develop, however, the book's setting is not Russian Hill. Surprisingly enough, it isn't really set entirely in San Francisco. And that is only the beginning of the surprises that Maleeny plants here. He is a wonderfully strong and confident writer, and other than bringing a couple of supporting characters with him from STEALING THE DRAGON, this is a very different story from its predecessor. BEATING THE BABUSHKA begins with Weathers being retained to investigate what looks to all the world to be a suicide. Tom Abrahams, who is in San Francisco producing an epic disaster movie for Empire Films, falls to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge. Grace Calloway, Abrahams's co-producer and former lover, is convinced that his death was involuntary. Weathers, though not entirely sure that Abrahams didn't jump on his own, agrees to look into the matter. His curiosity is aroused one hundredfold when a couple of very dangerous gentlemen with Eastern European accents bluntly tell him to disengage himself from the investigation, an instruction that naturally causes Weathers to dig his heels into the ground and begin nosing around. Weathers has a small but interesting group of folks along to help him --- Linda, a reporter; Beau, a San Francisco homicide detective; Sally, an indispensable martial arts expert; and The Sloth. The Sloth is one of the most interesting supporting characters you're likely to encounter in a contemporary work of fiction --- his very nature keeps him from being used to carry an entire novel --- but Maleeny wisely uses him sparingly, though to great effect. It is worth reading a Weathers story just to encounter The Sloth, who combines a significant personality disorder with an uncanny computer genius. Weathers and the reader learn quite a bit about the politics and financing of filmmaking, as Weathers's investigation begins to dovetail into a series of bizarre and grisly deaths involving some lesser players in the San Francisco underworld. Weathers literally will go cross-country to solve this case before it is all over, putting himself in deadly jeopardy, escaping with aplomb and wisecracking his way through

This is a very excited and intrigue story. It is extremely well written -good story telling and an easy read. It is just simply super. I could hardly wait to read the next one "Beating the Babushka" by the same author.

Maleeny's vibrant characters continues to unfold the mysteries of the city in this page turner. Beating the Babushka did not dissapoint. The saga of Cape has me even more excited to see what's yet to come.