KNOWN TO EVIL

An offer he can’t refuse leads Leonid McGill (The Long Fall, 2009, etc.) on a grim tour that takes him from New York’s executive suites to its lowest dives.

Alphonse Rinaldo, special assistant to the City of New York, wants information he can’t be seen to want. He needs discreet inquiries made about Angelique Tara Lear so that he can rest assured that she’s doing all right. Through his legman, Sam Strange, he engages soiled ex-fixer McGill for the job, and a bevy of police cars around Angie’s building instantly informs McGill that she’s not a bit all right. FIT student/cocktail waitress Wanda Soa has been shot to death inside Angie’s apartment, presumably by the unknown heavy who was fatally stabbed around the same time. The discovery launches McGill into a free-wheeling investigation in which he bounces like a pinball from high-priced lawyers to building supers to sex-slavers, all the while pretending to more identities than can be found in the Manhattan phone directory. His inquiries are frequently interrupted by his continued struggles to rescue Ron Sharkey, a businessman he’d framed years ago, from the dire consequences of his years in prison, and his frazzled attempts to deal with his unfaithful wife and wayward sons, who make his domestic life just as chaotic as his professional life. This time, however, these sidelights provide ballast for a case whose complications are so labyrinthine that you’ll need a score card to keep track of the suspects, motives and incidental felonies.

A rich collection of individual scenes and people as memorable as the tangled plot is forgettable.