Description:
San Francisco boxing columnist Billy Nichols figured he'd covered all the angles and pinned the blame where it belonged for the pair of killings that lay at the racing heart of Eddie Muller's first noirish crime novel, The Distance. But he didn't know the half of it. Now, in Shadow Boxer, the loose ends that Nichols left hanging entangle him in a conspiracy involving coerced testimony, a multi-million-dollar bunco racket, and stolen evidence that the reporter fears could liberate the man accused of murdering his lover, Claire Escalante. It's late 1948, only months after Claire's death, and Nichols (aka "Mr. Boxing") would rather see her killer "rot in a prison cell, for life," than help him prove that he's being sacrificed to cover up a more extensive criminal operation. Yet when the defendant's former secretary--hiding out to protect her life--shares with Nichols a file of dubious trust documents linking her ex-boss to a prominent but freshly deceased lawyer, the newspaperman smells a story--a stink, really--that carries all the way up from San Francisco's ringside seats, through a backroom abortion clinic, and into the city's top law-enforcement offices. Nichols, shaped by both the newsroom and the sometimes larcenous sport he loves, is an appropriately flawed protagonist, engagingly employed by Muller, a film-noir authority (The Art of Noir) and the son of a renowned Bay Area boxing writer. Shadow Boxer spends regrettably less time in seedy arenas and sweaty locker rooms than its predecessor, and its convoluted plot may knock some readers for a loop. However, Muller's hard-muscled prose and fast-count pacing still make his second novel a main attraction. --J. Kingston Pierce
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