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**From a writer described as “a worthy successor to Raymond Chandler” (Michael Connelly), the follow-up to *Shortcut Man*, featuring Dick Henry in a rousing tale of sin and salvation in the City of Angels.** Dick Henry is the Shortcut Man, assisting people with their sticky situations in the belief that the shortest answer to many problems may not always be legal. In *Tribulations of the Shortcut Man*, he reluctantly provides assistance to an old girlfriend, pole dancer Pussy Grace. After Pussy’s boyfriend, rich and famous developer and septuagenarian Art Lewis, has inexplicably cut off communication with her, Dick and Puss enter Lewis’s mansion disguised as gas company employees to investigate. Everything quickly goes downhill. Dick and Puss flee, leaving the very dead Art Lewis behind. Dick anticipates arrest until news breaks the next morning: Art Lewis has just gotten married and is now enjoying his honeymoon. Realizing a conspiracy is afoot, Dick must navigate his way through the underbelly of Los Angeles and a motley crew of miscreants in pursuit of justice. “Filled with enough dark humor and shady characters to satisfy the most rabid noir fan” (Associated Press), p.g. sturges’s Shortcut Man series is hard-boiled crime at its best. ** ### From Booklist Superior Court Judge Harry Glidden also plays a judge on TV. His wife, Ellen, costars with him. But when their show is abruptly canceled, Harry’s judge’s salary won’t support their lifestyle. Beautiful, scheming Ellen hatches a plan to liberate $50 million from an aging developer who happens to be canoodling with pole dancer Pussy Grace, a former girlfriend of Shortcut Man Dick Henry. Pussy imposes on Dick to find out why her lover hasn’t contacted her. Murder and mayhem most bizarre ensue. Sturges follows up his funny, offbeat debut, Shortcut Man (2010), with more of the same. Many characters—a former teenybopper idol who now dedicates his life to coke and crack, for instance, and a physicist who fried his brain on string theory before discovering his real life’s work, the study of Tinseltown sexual antics— are memorably twisted and effectively add to the portrayal of Los Angeles as seedy, avaricious, and hilariously bent that began in Shortcut Man. --Thomas Gaughan ### Review "A **rollicking** new LA crime novel. . . . A **well-paced and suspenseful damn good read**, full of deft observations, honest sentiment, and screwball touches that would make his father proud." (*Los Angeles Review of Books*) "*Shortcut Man* is **a glorious read**: **powerful, clever, suspenseful** and filled with enough dark humor and shady characters to satisfy the most rabid noir fan, and convert those who aren't already." (*Associated Press*) "This is **an assured and diverting performance**, with an ending that **should impress even the most seasoned fan of hardboiled detective stories**. You thought every twist ending in the noir bag had been taken out and used up, p.g. sturges seems to be saying as the book rushes toward its final page. Well, get a load of this." (*Washington Post*)