Lawrence Sanders rates as one of my all-time favourite detective story writers. The entire McNally canon just oozes with all the things that makes a good crime pot-boiler - dastardly and clever crime, beautiful women, and a wonderfully authentic urban setting. Glamour, glitz, girls and gore, in other words. What makes the McNally books special though, is the fact that they are narrated in the first person through perhaps the most lovable (male) idiosyncratic detective of all time, the one and only Archy McNally. Unlike other great first person detective stories, it's not told through the amanuensis (Captain Hastings and Archie Goodwin being the prime examples of that particular style) but through the detective, and it's part of what makes the entire McNally canon such a uniquely terrific read, along with his truly wicked sense of humour. You cannot help but falling for Archy, after beguiling you with his charm he'll astound you with his cleverness. And make you chuckle, grin, occasionally hoot and raise an eyebrow or two along the way.The McNally series is set in Palm Beach, Florida, where Archy McNally, bon vivant, charming cassanova, and general gadfly-about-town resides. He's similar to Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey, in that he conceals a clever and if need be ruthless deductive intelligence behind a facade of affable facetiousness. Unlike Wimsey, however, Archy is far more susceptible to the charms of the more beguiling sex, despite having a terrific paramour in one Consuela Garcia, (whom I would describe as the sort of woman string bikinis were designed for) to whom he is repeatedly unfaithful, which he admits quite candidly and blames on having seen Jane Seymour in a certain role at an impressionable age. He has a few other amusing excuses for his infidelity, but I can't remember them off-hand, unfortunately. Anyway, he works for McNally and Son, his father's somewhat unimaginatively titled law firm. Archy isn't a lawyer himself, having been expelled from Yale for streaking naked across the stage wearing a Richard Nixon mask during a concert performance, so instead bears the official title of paralegal. His real job, however, is heading a division named 'Discreet Inquiries', of which he is the sole member, and investigating those cases which his father deems worthy of special tact and discretion in their handling. This review will now get into the specifics of McNally's Gamble. Feel free to click on read more if you like, but the quicker you start on the series, the happier you'll be.The full review can be found here.http://bookweyr.blogspot.in/search/la...
