Eddie Perlmutter, after his sparkling debut in Boca Knights, makes a welcome return in Steven M. Forman’s new novel. Eddie is still working as a pi in Boca Raton, this time having to deal with a widow with dementia, a neo-Nazi father and son, the apparent disappearance of a gay couple, and his own prostate problem. And that’s just skimming the surface of this laugh-out-loud funny novel.
Eddie describes himself as “one of Boston’s most decorated policemen from 1966 to 2000, but now I was just a sixty-year-old retired cop living in Florida. I was five feet seven and weighed slightly over my fighting weight. I was in great shape for an antique.” He had been dubbed The Boca Knight by an area news reporter, becoming a local hero and mini celebrity and inspiring others to call themselves Boca Knights, living by the principal, as Eddie says, of being “willing to fight for everyone’s right to live in peace.” Widowed for many years, he is famously determined to live an uncommitted life, despite his fondness for his much younger Haitian-born girlfriend.
Eddie refers to his new place of residence as Broken Heights, where “murder is rare and rape is ninety percent below the national average,” but, as Eddie points out, “so is consensual sex.” He enters into a strange partnership with another senior citizen improbably named “Louie Dewey” – don’t ask. There are references to scenes from the original Depression and some ensuing years, with all seemingly loose ends tied up completely and very satisfyingly by the book’s end. Without doubt the author has a wacky sense of humor, but neither he, nor his protagonist, is without sentiment, and along with the broad smiles elicited by the writing were, I am unashamed to admit, some tears. The book more than lives up to the challenge presented by the follow-up novel to an excellent beginning of the series, and this one is just as highly recommended.
