La Donna Detroit: A Detective Sergeant Mulheisen Mystery

Hard-boiled, decidedly quirky, and not a little bit zany, Jon Jackson's La Donna Detroit takes its place as the eighth, and perhaps the loopiest, entrant in Jackson's deservedly popular Detective Sergeant "Fang" Mulheisen mystery series. The Fang tale, which began with 1977's The Diehard, concerns itself with, among many others, the aforementioned Detroit detective (a peripheral character in La Donna Detroit); his somewhat brutal police mentor, Grootka; Helen Sedlacek, the daughter of a whacked crime boss who, in turn, whacked the whacker and who is the lover of the fugitive Joe Service, a hit man who has been dogging or is being dogged by Fang from day one; and Humphrey DiEbola, the current crime boss, who ascended the throne thanks to Helen's murderous activities and who, despite that fact that she's helped herself to eight million of his hardly earned dollars, has taken Helen under his wing and seems for all intents and purposes to be grooming her as his heir. In fact, DiEbola would like her to assume control of his Detroit-based, ersatz Cuban cigar concern, even if they had to sell at a loss for a while:

No, she didn't want that. She was too good a businesswoman. She believed that with Berta's help she could get her girls to turn out a quality cigar. They could go two ways: her girls would slap labels on them, any label she wanted, and they could be peddled as "illegal" Cuban "seconds"; and they'd also work on a public, over-the-counter cigar, the LaDonna series. Five bucks. Basically the same cigar, quality tobacco from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and so on; they'd be good cigars; they might lose money for a while, but they would slowly build a clientele.

As Helen becomes further ensconced in DiEbola's web-like netherworld, renegade federal agents surface, Joe resurfaces, and, after a deadly accident that seems far too coincidental and beneficial, Fang Mulheisen arrives--late to dinner but in plenty of time for dessert. Enter the series with La Donna Detroit and leap around, or pick them up in order. Either way you'll read them all, and some you'll read more than once. --Michael Hudson