35 yr old suicide investigation uncovers murder

A slightly crude, San Francisco-based PI paints a picture of his early eighties San Francisco neighborhoods, his practical girlfriend, his mildly shallow business partner and his girlfriend, as a thin backdrop to a by-the-numbers murder mystery. Occurring in the realm of pulp fiction authors in the forties in the West, and a particular author who's unknown son hires the PI to look into his father's apparent suicide becomes entwined in a set of living and dead oldsters whose decades-old desires come out. A current homicide and unraveling of the mystery fits or sets the mold, the story is workmanlike and at times not believable, but solidly written and amusing. ( )