The Corpse in the Cabana

Book excerpt: It’s a bad case of stage fright for a stand-up comic with killer material and blood on his hands. Lawrence Lariar was one the most popular cartoonists of the twentieth century. But from the 1940s through the 1960s, he also crafted a line of lean and mean detective and mystery novels under his own name as well as the pseudonyms Michael Stark, Adam Knight, Michael Lawrence, and Marston La France. Lariar now gets his due as a leading artist in hardboiled crime fiction. Manhattan PI Steve Gant is on a busman’s holiday at The Glades, a beachfront cabaret for the rich and famous. The joint is a big break for his childhood buddy Chuck Bond, a rising comic emceeing opening night. Unfortunately, the gagman’s got the sweats. A tabloid rag is ready to kill his career with one story: Chuck’s past as a member of the Kings Highway Kings, a notorious Flatbush wolf pack that terrorized the city years ago. But Chuck’s got an even bigger problem here and now. Headlining songbird Gloria Clark is in his cabana with a knife in her back. Now he wants one small favor from Gant: help him hide her body. Is Chuck being framed? Is Gant a dupe? As bad as it looks, it’s going to get worse. No joke.