The Fame Thief

The Fame Thief is the third Junior Bender novel from Timothy Hallinan, and it is the entry where the LA comic-crime series reaches the level of Donald Westlake at his peak. Junior, the professional burglar who works investigative jobs for other criminals, is coerced into looking into who ruined the career of a former B-movie actress whose blacklisting and forced retirement happened more than fifty years ago. The case unspools across present-day Los Angeles and the layered 1950s Hollywood politics that the woman's ruin grew out of.

Hallinan's strength in The Fame Thief is the way he weaves the historical research and the comic-thriller machinery into the same braided plot. The McCarthyist period material is handled with the kind of careful research the form does not require, and the contemporary investigation runs through a wonderful cast of nonagenarian former mobsters whose memories have aged in particular ways. Fans of Donald Westlake's Dortmunder novels or Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr books will recognize the comic-heist form operating at the highest level.

Junior's ex-wife and teenage daughter Rina continue to anchor the emotional ground the series has been building. The closing chapters are some of the cleanest payoffs in any recent crime novel.

Five stars. The Junior Bender series at peak. The Fame Thief Timothy Hallinan novel is the right entry point for readers new to comic-crime fiction. Recommended without reservation for fans of Westlake, Block, Carl Hiaasen, or anyone who likes their thrillers funny without losing the moral weight.