The Sweet Ride - Richard S. Prather
It's not all fun and games being a handsome 30 year old private detective who is hit with the hot tomatoes. There is a ripe one Anjarene waiting on a promising date but Shell has been called away for an urgent assignment. Even Sheldon Scott has to pay the bills. It's even better though when you get paid and don't have to do any work. Mind you, when you get hired on a case of utmost urgency and corruption in high political office by the mayor, travel to the other end of the state and then find that "actually we don't need your services, it's all been a mistake", Shell isn't just going to let it go without asking a few questions around town. When a truck heads towards him and runs him off the road, maybe he wishes he had taken the money and quietly gone back for that date with Anjarene….
Than again, it's not as if Newton doesn't have it's share of attractive women, most of them wearing little or no clothing, all dangerously flirtatious, even the Mayor Fowler's 'daughter'. Scott needs to be careful there and very nearly isn't, as he's there - albeit briefly before being fired - at the behest of Mayor Everson Fowler. The mayor had been hoping to clean up the town, which is under the influence of some powerful people - and possible rivals for running the town - involved in criminal activities. People like Hugh Grimason. Fowler has reason to believe that Grimason killed the previous investigator Ramirez, but has no proof and the only person claiming to be a witness, Yoogy Dibler, turns out to be an unreliable drunkard whose story doesn't add up. Shell starts to get the impression that someone is taking him for a sweet ride.
The Sweet Ride follows the familiar pattern for Shell Scott mysteries and strikes a good balance between the saucy comedy and the actions of violent criminals. The ones he gets involved with here are particularly tricky, running a scheme that not only has Scott not trusting anyone he comes into contact with, unsure even if they are who they say they are, but they don't mess around when it comes to removing him from the picture. In fact, Prather alerts us early on to just how far they will go before unusually playing with time lines and relating what led up to Shell being almost killed when driven off the road.
It's the usual well-paced, well-plotted writing from Prather, well-balanced with cracking witty one-liners. These tend to be Scott's wolfish reaction to all the hot babes he comes into contact with, who all seem keen on dropping all their clothes for him, but there are a few other evocative and original descriptions and reactions spread throughout.
Favourite lines:
"I guess the first thing I noticed about her was that she didn't have anything on. In fact, I know it that's the first thing I noticed about her".
"'From your description, that would have been Officer Jonah'. 'Yeah, it fits him. he looked like he'd been puked up by a whale".
"Canada's expression {...} was deliciously tender, concerned, almost maternal. The maternal emotion is not one a man would set out deliberately to induce in a stupendously vital tomato, particularly one so marvellously constructed as to appear engaged in sexual isometrics even when yawning".
"I'd spotted several other girls floating to and fro in the dimness of Club Rogue. They weren't difficult to spot, since they were the only girls here, and also the only people without clothes, and it was thus not difficult to determine that they were girls".
"She undulated the last few feet to our table and stopped, not exactly all at once, but in wondrously impressive stages. This gal had a body that was practically articulate. And I'd thought of a couple of questions to ask it".
"Maybe he's no Einstein, but he don't even have to add up two and two. he just subtracts one from two, and you can guess who is the one subtracted".
"Somewhere deep in a purely feminine soft spot in her brain the clunk of fists on chops had met and mated with female logic and as though from a short circuited computer had spewed sudden Truth perceptible only to babes who have been clunked on their chops and knocked on their cans: 'He hit me! He beats me! He must love me!"
And just "Yoogy Dibler". What a great name for a character!
Reading notes: The Sweet Ride by Richard S. Prather is included in the Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Five, part of an inexpensive six volume collection that covers the complete Shell Scott series (or as good as). The series is published as eBook/Kindle editions only by Wolfpack publishing. The Kindle edition is excellent, the series a bargain.
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