Loot the Moon

August 3, 2009
At the start of Shamus-finalist Arsenault's fine second novel to feature former investigative journalist Billy Povich (after 2006's Gravewriter
), Povich is writing obituaries for a Charlestown, R.I., newspaper. When ex-con Adam Rackers guns down Charlestown's leading judge, attorney Martin Smothers offers Povich a tougher job—finding out who hired Rackers to carry out the hit. Povich, a single dad with a son to take care of as well as an ailing father, learns a local gangster threatened the judge shortly before the murder. Meanwhile, Smothers discovers the judge had a secret life in New York City, complete with a mistress who considered herself his second wife. The author lightens the hard-nosed detecting with humor, even injecting it effectively into conversations between Povich and his father about end-of-life issues. The action builds to a genuinely surprising but logical solution. Fans of Harry Hunsicker's Dallas PI series (Still River
, etc.) will appreciate Povich.

September 1, 2009
Was the judge's murder a carjacking gone bad, or something more sinister?

In Rhode Island, Stu picks up a pair of hitchhikers in his old Lincoln. Next thing he knows, he's in the back seat next to a nervous gunman who takes his pistol away from Stu's head to aim it at the belligerent driver. Cut to sporadically successful gambler Billy Povich, accosted at the dog track by his friend and lawyer Martin Smothers, who's obsessed with the killing of his mentor, Judge Gil Harmony. Petty thief Adam Rackers killed Harmony mid-carjacking and died himself in a subsequent crash. The sole survivor, Stuart Tracy, lies gravely injured in the hospital. Instinct tells Martin that there's more to the story. He nudges one-time newspaper reporter/sometime sleuth Billy into investigating. While Billy questions Stu, Arsenault introduces two colorful subplots (more are on the way): Harmony's attractive law clerk Kit Bass is beaten by bouncers as she tries to see mobbed-up club owner Mr. Glanz, and a larcenous bartender named Scratch barely escapes a fatal attack in his bathroom by an intruder masked by a plastic bag. Martin has problems of his own when the reading of the judge's will is complicated by the surprise appearance of Harmony's secret wife...or was she? A death threat gets Billy to take the case seriously.

Billy's second has the same assets and liabilities as its predecessor (Gravewriter, 2006): sharp, stylish prose and a great cast of supporting characters much more interesting than the hero.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from September 1, 2009
The murder of a Providence, Rhode Island, superior court judge stymies chronic gambler, consummate obituary writer, and sometime investigator Billy Povich in the latest offering in Arsenaults smart, distinctive series. The man who killed the Honorable Gilbert Harmony was the most unlikely of suspects, a two-bit shoplifter who clearly got in way over his head. But the perpetrator was killed in a car crash shortly after the crime, leaving Povich and his defense-attorney pal Martin Smothers little to go on but a hunch that some sinister mastermind was behind the dark deed. Povich already has plenty on his plate: an ailing father who wants to discontinue his dialysis treatments, and a lonely, impressionable son whose best friend is an Albert Einstein action figure. Now his days are consumed with following the trail back from a dead man, hoping to find justice for a pillar of the legal community. Arsenault delivers plenty of suspense, but its his characters who steal the show: Judge Harmonys law clerk, Kit Bass, an elite runner who catches fleeing culprits with her gazelle-like stride; Povichs legal pal, Smothers, who cant wear leather shoes around his hyper-vigilant vegan wife; and Povich himself, flawed, likable, and ready to risk his life to crack a killer of a case. A top-notch crime novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)