Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Somebody is stealing stuff from a mall that time forgot, located deep in the ass end of the San Fernando Valley. The down-market mobster, Trip Poindexter, who owns the mall is pissed and hires Junior Bender, a thief himself when he's not sleuthing for the crooks of L.A., to find out who's pinching the tchotchkes. Junior wants nothing to do with the job, but he owes a favor to another mobster, the lethal Trey Annunciato, so when she tells Junior to take the gig, it's the proverbial offer that can't be refused. It doesn't help that it's Christmas in sunny California, and Junior considers the whole yuletide season "the last letdown before the theoretically happy New Year." There might not even be a new year this time if Junior doesn't nab the thief, but his first tour of the mall leaves him clueless, convinced only that the culprit is neither of the two Santas—the too-thin one named Schlomo, who's at least relatively merry, and the appropriately sized one who's way too mean for the job. Then someone ups the Christmas ante by murdering one of the shop owners. Naturally, Junior finds a cobwebby network of double crosses buried deep in the mall's crumbling foundation and must dance his way way to a life-saving solution (while somehow getting his Christmas shopping done). Nobody does comic mystery with an edge better than Hallinan. Copyright 2016 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
There's not a lot of ho-ho-hoing in the Edgerton Mall this Christmas, with so many stores closed and shoplifting a growing problem. Enter series antihero, burglar Junior Bender, who's asked by the mall's Russian owners to check out the shoplifting. Instead, two people wind up dead, even as Junior meditates mournfully on the very idea of Christmas. Sixth in the series from the Edgar-, Nero-, Shamus-, and Macavity-nominated Hallinan.
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Junior Bender, burglar and occasional fixer for the L.A. crime world, makes his sixth appearance (after King Maybe) in this funny, fast-paced mystery. It's the week before Christmas, and Junior is forced into investigating the sudden increase in shoplifting at the Edgerton Mall for one of the mall's owners, a dangerous Russian gangster. When the corpse of a shopkeeper surfaces, it's clear that something even more nefarious is going on amid the rundown stores. In between dodging bullets and detecting, Junior fits in a little Christmas shopping and soul-searching as he gets to the bottom of the case. VERDICT Hallinan offers up everything readers could want in a hard-boiled crime novel with an action-packed story and a cast of colorful characters. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/16.]. Copyright 2016 Library Journal.
PW Annex Reviews
Edgar-finalist Hallinan deserves to win an Edgar for his ingeniously plotted, often hilarious sixth Junior Bender novel (after King Maybe). Junior, a thief who has "probably stolen more things than most people own," owes a favor to a San Fernando Valley, Calif., crime boss, and agrees to work for a scary Russian thug who has adopted the name Tip Poindexter. The Edgerton Mall, which Tip owns, has recently experienced a dramatic spike in shoplifting, and Tip demands that Junior find out why. The assignment is depressing for Junior, since it comes just days before Christmas, which has always been an emotionally trying holiday for him. The investigation pays off with a brilliant solution that few will anticipate, and the sophisticated story line is only one of the book's highlights. Another is the masterly way in which Hallinan creates his own world-weary Chandlerian narrative voice (a golf club Junior visits is "one of the Valley's shiny new gathering places for people whose money was recently acquired and whose manners hadn't yet been sanded down into the smooth indifference that marks multiple generations of wealth"). Readers will eagerly await Junior's next adventure. Agent: Bob Mecoy, Bob Mecoy Literary. (Oct.) Copyright 2016 Publisher Weekly Annex.