From Publishers Weekly
In the latest Alan Bernhardt mystery, following Except for the Bones , the San Francisco actor/director and part-time sleuth is absent for nearly the first third of the tale. By the time he comes on stage, an imprisoned mobster has died and secretly left behind some valuables to a woman named Louise, his daughter by a former mistress. The new capo de capo isn't glad to learn about this cache of jewels. Louise tells her 20-year-old daughter, Angela, that the mob may be looking for them and the legacy, which they have to dig up from its hiding place; Angela approaches Alan for help. In short order, suave Chinese killer, Brian Chin, is in on the doings as well. Wilcox, who also writes a series about a persistent San Francisco cop named Hastings, gradually establishes an authentic mobster milieu, offering the required mix of brutality and honor. The action accelerates as Alan, Angela and others trace their way through a series of betrayals and allegiances, including an abduction, but it all leads to a somewhat loosely tied ending.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Capo Carlo Venezzio dies of a heart attack while in prison, but not before he's ordered right-hand man Tony Bacardo to see that a million dollars' worth of diamonds has been salted away for his illegitimate daughter, Louise, and her daughter, Angela. To help Louise claim the jewels, hidden in a cemetery in tiny Fowler's Landing, California, Bacardo, now swearing allegiance to another don, Benito Cella, must tread carefully; meanwhile, a mafia soldier, Fabrese, is on his trail and wants the diamonds for himself, so Bacardo hotfoots it back to New York, telling the women to recover the jewels themselves. They call in part-time p.i. Alan Bernhardt (Except for the Bones, etc.), who witnesses a double- cross--which leads to a double-kidnapping. The mafia then reenters the picture, and Bernhardt must exert last-minute heroics to avert a bloodbath. A persuasive primer on the mafia's business methods and ethics. Old pro Wilcox characterizes the mobsters so deftly that his story suffers when it switches focus to Bernhardt. Flawed but clever. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
“Persuasive . . . clever.” —Kirkus Reviews
“As always, Wilcox and Bernhardt deliver the goods.” —Booklist on Full Circle
“Collin Wilcox gets better and better.” —Tony Hillerman
About the Author
Collin Wilcox (1924–1996) was an American author of mystery fiction. Born in Detroit, he set most of his work in San Francisco, beginning with 1967’s The Black Door—a noir thriller starring a crime reporter with extrasensory perception. Under the pen name Carter Wick, he published several standalone mysteries including The Faceless Man (1975) and Dark House, Dark Road (1982), but he found his greatest success under his own name, with the celebrated Frank Hastings series.
Hastings, a football player turned San Francisco homicide detective, made his debut in The Lonely Hunter (1969), and Wilcox continued to follow him for the rest of his career, publishing nearly two dozen novels in the series, which concludes with Calculated Risk (1995). Wilcox’s other best-known series stars Alan Bernhardt, a theatrical director with a habit of getting involved in behind-the-scenes mysteries. Bernhardt appeared in four more books after his introduction in 1988’s Bernhardt’s Edge.
