JOHN BIRKETT – The Last Private Eye. Avon, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1988.

   Even if you’re a diehard private eye fan as far as your reading material is concerned, I’m sure that you’ll have to admit that, well, some of the books you read are better than others. This one’s a case in point.

   The Last Detective is the first of two recorded adventures of Louisville PI Michael Rhineheart, the second being The Queen’s Mare (Avon, 1990), both being nominated for Shamus Awards by the MWA in the category of Best Paperback Original PI Novel.

   Birkett has a nice breezy style of writing that goes a long way in disguising the fact that there isn’t much here that you haven’t read before, unless this is the first PI novel you’ve ever read. Rhineheart has a secretary who is not very good at typing but who wants to go out assisting him on cases instead; he has a former mentor in the PI business, now an aging old man who shows up on this case just when he’s needed most.

   Along the way Rhineheart plays with fire and falls in love with the wife of one the more important men in town. When he’s clobbered on the back of the head after he finds a source lying dead in her room, he’s up and around the next day, just fine. He’s offered a high-powered job in the state capital if he would be so kind as to close down his agency, but he turns it down. On the other hand, his client is the one who backs down when the going gets tough.

   What else? Let me tell you. He works out of Louisville, Derby Day is coming up soon, one of the rich guys in town is obsessed with winning the thing — the one with the wife — and the fellow Rhineheart is hired to find is a low level stable guy whose trail leads to a locker in which he finds a hypodermic syringe and a residue of brand new unidentifiable chemical substance.

   What do you think?

   Don’t get me wrong. The book is fun to read, and there is an interesting twist or two toward the end. Overall though, I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to find this one — not very far, that is.