Dreamboat

A Jack Flippo Mystery

HarperCollins, February 1995

It’s sink or swim when Dallas PI Jack Flippo rocks the boat.

Sprung from jail after a barroom fight with his ex-wife’s current boyfriend, Dallas private investigator and ex-lawyer Jack Flippo might be down but at least he’s out. Just in time to wrap his mitts around an insurance company probe into the “accidental” drowning of nightclub owner Mingo Gideon in the small town of Baggett.

Poking around the backwaters, Jack floats a few theories of his own. Only they don’t impress everyone–especially not Mingo’s partner Rex Echols who has a big fat insurance policy burning a hole where his heart should be; a deadpan sheriff whose chief thrill is obstructing justice; or even a gifted stripper-waitress named April Showers, who loves to agitate strangers. Jack knows danger when he smells it, and Baggett is getting downright ripe. Only two things make him nervous–a drop-dead deadline hanging over him and half a mil that someone will do anything to keep.

“Gruesomely funny…In this sort of company, you don’t so much follow the plot as trot alongside, giggling in horror, while it sniffs its way home.”–The New York Times Book Review