Everything But the Squeal (Simeon Grist Mystery #2) - Timothy Hallinan

Written by Timothy Hallinan
Format: MP3
Unabridged

Robert B. Parker and Robert Crais fans will enjoy 2011 “Best Novel” nominee Hallinan’s overeducated private eye, Simeon Grist. In the second book in Hallinan’s cult series, originally published in the 1990s, Grist takes a case, that leads him to the phantom neighborhoods of L.A.’s lost children.

Missing thirteen-year-old Aimee Sorrell, who ran all the way from Kansas to be a star. But Aimee’s trail soon leads Simeon to the city morgue, the first stop on a perilous journey to find out what happens to America’s lost children when they go looking for love in all the wrong places.

*From Publishers Weekly
Simeon Grist, seen before in The Four Last Things , is an up-to-date private eye, a hip survivor of the Woodstock Generation bemused by current L.A. life. He’s also a bit seedy, drinking too much and backsliding into cigarette smoking, with a wry outlook and heart of gold that keep him squarely in the hardboiled Hammett-Chandler tradition. Hired to find a 13-year-old runaway who left Kansas to become a Hollywood star, Simeon soon finds himself mired in L.A.’s seamy underworld of teenage hustlers, pimps and all-around losers. Using as decoys his teenage godchild Jessica and a young computer whiz smitten by her, Simeon uncovers a vast interstate ring involving a talent agency, a bent cop and high-tech kiddy-sex. While providing a nasty new meaning for a computer “menu” and some scenes not for the squeamish, Hallinan employs skillful pacing, L.A. color and Simeon’s attractive persona to grip readers right through the gory climax and somewhat reassuring ending.