WHISKEY SOUR.

WHISKEY SOUR by J.A. KONRATH.

Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels is having a bad week. Her live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has caused her to max out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself  'The Gingerbread Man' is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.

Between avoiding the FBI and its moronic profiling computer, joining a dating service, mixing it up with street thugs, and parrying the advances of an uncouth P.I, Jack and her binge-eating partner, Herb, must catch the maniac before he kills again ..... and Jack is next on his murder list.
....... From the inner front cover.

FIRST SENTENCE: There were four black and whites already at the 7-eleven when I arrived.

MEMORABLE MOMENT: If this weren't such a somber situation, the image of two detectives flashing around pictures of the gingerbread man and asking "have you seen him?" would be pretty funny.

The first in the Lieutenant Jack Daniels series and I loved it.

Just that little bit different, Whiskey Sour was not just a crime caper but also a comedy which, if not exactly laugh out loud, had me quietly chuckling to myself from the start with witty asides such as:

"Sorry to hear about your dad."

He shrugged. "He was seventy, and we always told him fast food would kill him."

"Heart attack?"

"He was hit by a Pizza Express truck."

And this was only page 3.

Fast paced and, at times, full of suspense, this was a novel with an interesting plot but more than that were the wonderful array of truly odd-ball characters - not least of which were my two favourites, Special Agents Daily and Coursey, both of whom made Inspector Closeau of The Pink Panther fame seem highly intelligent.

A real page-turner, I highly recommend  this J.A Konrath novel which I purchased as ex-library stock.