Handler, David The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again

This is what I would call a summer throw-a-way. Handler has written a slew of these books and their unifying feature is a lovable basset hound named Lulu who is always on hand with an important clue to help solve the mystery.  I sense that this is the one that tells you the author is running out of new ideas, so he returns to the time when he got the dog and when he returns to his old hometown that he swore he would never return to.

We get a little dose of soft-porn to keep the cozy mystery folks at bay. It comes along with the improbable plot that our hero Stuart Hoag has just leaped out of 13 years away from home trying to become a writer. Finally, his big book materializes, and money and fame come to him along with the passionate attention of a six-foot-tall blond actress who is more famous than he is.

Why does he go home again? Well, the librarian back in his old hometown was one of the few women who treated him well when he was growing up. She has been murdered at her desk and Mr. Hoag “Hoagie” decides to return for her funeral with his puppy and new squeeze. Soon, he is involved with the task of finding the killer and that means involvement with all the low life created by the Hoag family’s now defunct business that poisoned all the water in the town and shot the cancer rate through the roof.  Handler tries to write with humor, but to give you an idea of the level of it, all I need to do is mention that there is a running joke about the town’s current police chief who was called “Peter the Beater” by Hoagie and his old school pals. Nuff said.  Check this one out only if you are desperate.

I give it a 1.5 out of 5