Lucky Stiff by Deborah Coonts
The second “Lucky O’Toole Vegas Adventure” starts out with a truck mishap that releases millions of angry bees on the Las Vegas strip. Customer Relations executive for the Babylon resort in Vegas enlists the head of an etymological society holding a convention at the hotel to come up with a plan for ridding the strip of the bees. Unfortunately, it means killing most of them. Later, a local bookie, “Numbers” Neidermeyer, is found dead and half eaten in the shark tank at Mandalay Bay and Lucky’s PI friend, “The Beautiful” Jeremy Whitlock is a suspect. Further investigation found that Numbers spent part of her last evening in the company of Daniel and Glinda Lovato, the city’s DA, and his wife. Both had reason to want Neidermeyer out of the say, as did Glinda’s father, Jimmy G. In fact, many people had a reason to get rid of Numbers.
There are a couple of other zany storylines in this continuation of Lucky O’Toole’s tale. Lucky’s love, Teddy, has gotten a record contract and a chance to tour with a Los Angeles diva causing a certain amount of friction, and a lot of make-up sex when Teddy returns to Vegas. The Babylon is getting ready to host Fight Week and particularly the last prize fight of a famous middleweight named Tortilla Padilla. Padilla, his wife and 15 kids invade the Babylon and charm everyone. In addition, Lucky’s crazy mother, Mona, has gotten involved with a young woman who wants to sell her virginity to the highest bidder in order to make money to pay for medical school for herself and her fiance and Mona agrees to hold the auction and subsequent deflowering at her brothel in Pahrump.
Las Vegas is the one city in the country where it is actually possible to believe so much zaniness could go on and people can go about their daily lives just thinking all this is normal. For those of us who do not live in Vegas the Lucky O’Toole series is an opportunity to live vicariously in the middle of these weird situations without actually having to physically go to Vegas. It makes for a few days of guilty pleasure reading each time a new installment comes out. “Lucky Stiff” was definitely a guilty pleasure.
Speaking of which– the latest Lucky O’Toole book, “So Damn Lucky” is coming out in February. I look forward to reading it.
Liz Nichols
(A copy of the book was supplied to the author for review.)