GLORIA DANK – Friends Till the End. Bernard Woodruff & Snooky Randolph #1. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1989.

   This light-hearted tale of murder in suburban Connecticut reminded ma a bit at first of Richard Lockridge, with a little less sparkle but with a lot more off-the-wall humor that eventually teeters into out-and-out wackiness. Hardboiled fiction it isn’t.

   Dead (of poison) is the wealthy wife of a man who claims he was the intended victim, and to give him credit, he actually is the next target. Give this one a “2” (out of 10) for ingenuity of plot, and give Bernard and Snooky (who work out the solution together) a “6” or “7”.

–Reprinted from Mystery*File #18, December 1989, in slightly revised form.


        The Bernard Woodruff & Snooky Randolph series —

Friends Till the End. Bantam 1989.
Going Out in Style. Bantam 1990.
As the Sparks Fly Upward. Doubleday 1992.
The Misfortunes of Others. Doubleday 1993.


[UPDATE] 11-04-18. Since I didn’t take the space to explain who the two mismatched detectives are in this series, let me do it now: Bernard Woodruff, a curmudgeonly children’s book author, and Snooky Randolph, who has never found a vocation and lives off a trust fund, are brothers-in-law who in spite of their differences somehow manage to solve mysteries together.