TUCKER HALLERAN – A Cool Clear Death. Cam MacCardle #1. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1984; paperback, May 1986.

   Cam MacCardle, once a famous professional football star, turns private investigator in this, his first case, in which the wife of a quiet, unassuming stockbroker, is murdered. With no evidence against him except that he has no alibi, the police have settled on the husband as the killer.

   I hate to say it, but MacCardle is one of the slowest moving PI’s I’ve ever read about, and even he admits that luck has much to do with solving the case. It also takes something like 75 pages for him to tell his whole life story, The red herring smells, too.

— Reprinted from Mystery.File.5, May 1988.

   

PostScript: There was a second book in the series, Sudden Death Finish (St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1985) but that seems to have been all there’s ever been.