LARRY KARP – Scamming the Birdman. Write Way, hardcover, 2000. Worldwide Mystery, paperback, 2001.

   A close friend gave me this mystery that features Dr. Thomas Purdue, a medical doctor and collector of music boxes, and in this and the earlier The Music Box Murders, an amateur sleuth. He warned (advised?) me that it’s lighter than a Peter Lovesey novel but about the same “weight” as a Lovejoy, probably in recognition of the fact that I sometimes seem to prefer crime fiction with more gravitas than humor.

   In spite of that, I decided that something light was just what I needed after The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (reviewed here ) and wasted little time in digging in. The therapy worked, I am completely recovered from my previous blue funk. Karp’s novel is a fiendishly clever scam in which Purdue and some definitely shady associates repay a larcenous and probably murderous collector who has made off with the collection of a good friend of Purdue’s. Karp even reserves a little surprise after the scam has been carried off successfully, and I ended smiling and hoping that I can locate The Music Box Murders to recapture the pleasure I experienced with this novel.

   Karp is a collector and a restorer of antique music boxes, a former physician. The novel, in addition to being the entertaining record of an intricate and absorbing scam, is filled with details of antique music boxes that will appeal to any variety of collector, vividly communicating the wondrous marvels of what can clearly be an expensive passion.

Bibliographic Note:   A third and final Dr. Purdue mystery is The Midnight Special (2001).