Crashed

This is book #1 in Timothy Hallinan’s addictive Junior Bender series. Junior is a burglar and reluctant PI, and one of the most appealing sleuths in the history of mystery.

The characters were well drawn, dialogue was great, and plot fast paced and believable. This is a talented writer, and a great read!

This is the first of what (as of 12/2019) is a 7 (and counting) series of Junior Bender burglar crime solver mysteries. Yes, you read that right. Junior- real name, is a burglar who does high end break ins in Hollywood. He has never been arrested. He also has a side business, solving crimes for criminals. This is a quirky engaging series with characters that engage and entertain but none so much as our hero. He gets into and out of scrapes, befriends waitresses, his ex-wife, his daughter and his girlfriend. He has his very own style. I have not tried Timothy Hallinan’s other series but I will want to try them out. There are very highlight-able paragraphs!

It’s not something we think about very often, but it’s pretty inevitable that villains will prey on other villains as well as on straights. By definition, the victim-villains can’t go to the cops for help. What do they do? The answer in any number of other crime books is, they grab a gun and do their own vigilante thing. But in Crashed, the first installment in a series, the victim-villain goes another way: hire another villain to investigate the case and enact whatever passes for justice in this context.

Our detective-villain in this case is “Junior” Bender, a burglar of some repute, whom we meet at work dealing with vicious, hungry dogs and an insufficiently secured chandelier. He’s hornswoggled into taking a job from Trey Annunziato, an L.A. organized-crime boss who’s trying to go legit. She (yes, and a comely she, of course) has a problem: someone’s trying to sabotage a major porn production she’s financing. This particular production stars Thistle Downing, a former child star who has not only hit the skids, but has left a miles-long skid mark on the freeway of life. Junior gets to find the culprit or his extremities will be fed to the dogs previously mentioned.

Author Hallinan knows how to put a story together and how to populate it with vivid oddball characters. His Los Angeles settings show a more-than-passing familiarity with both the downmarket and upscale parts of the city, especially the San Fernando Valley. His descriptions come somewhere in between the extremes of feast and famine that we see in novels — detailed enough to clearly see the place or person being featured without wallowing in adjectives. The book reads fast and light; I probably could have put it away in a couple sittings if I’d had the time.

Junior is somewhat closer to the Rhodenbarr end of the fictional-burglar spectrum than he is to the Parker end. Still, he’s not exactly cuddly, and he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty with things worse than dog treats. He has the requisite rotten upbringing and difficulty maintaining adult relationships, and the kind of quirks (he lives in an endless rotation of fleabag hotels) we’ve come to expect of our protagonist-criminals. He does have his soft spots and weaknesses — which usually involve women in need of rescue — and in general you won’t mind following him around (which, since he’s the narrator, you have to).

Thistle is what’s left of an adolescent female version of Robin Williams: a gifted comic performer whose skill at mimicry and fierce improv licks carried an otherwise dire ’90s sitcom to pop-culture-icon status. The talent’s still there, buried under the drugs, bad attitude, and general hopelessness. She presents as a realistically muddled, hard-bitten victim of the Hollywood machine who has just enough of a spark left to take the help Junior offers her.

The other major characters are more-or-less types who are likely to be part of the series’ stock company. Since most live on the other side of the legal line, they have colorful nicknames, unusual physical features, and predictably unhealthy habits. At times it felt like Guys and Dolls shed some of its players and they fell into this novel; you’ll have to decide for yourself whether that’s a good thing.

It does tend to fit the story’s overall ethos, though. The author clearly had ’30s screwball comedy on his mind when he put digital ink to virtual paper. Junior is a smartass, as is nearly every other character. There’s a lot of snappy banter going on, the kind that never happens in real life because nobody’s that good with a comeback. Unfortunately, it tends to make the dialog seem sameish no matter who’s speaking. The situations and twists are usually fun enough that you won’t mind that they take place in a parallel universe. If La La Land had been a crime story rather than a romance, it would’ve been something like this.

Crashed is a wised-up, wiseacre caper story that starts rather than ends with a heist. The Runyonesque characters, rimshot dialog, and general eccentricity mean that you’ll have to approach this novel with precisely the right mindset and expectations or you’ll meet with great disappointment or, perhaps, cognitive dissonance. Don’t try to take any of this seriously and you might have some fun.

Very well-written, funny book about a thief with a conscience. I could not put it down simply because I enjoyed the writing so much, and the characters (especially the main character) were so well-drawn.

Fantastic. I’m hooked.

I liked the main character, Junior, who is a crook (burglar) with a sense of humor about things and himself. Book was a fun read and kept my interest. I plan to read the other Junior Bender books. The story was well written and moved right along. If you want to read a mystery series with a different kind of principle character, try this one. I think you’ll enjoy it.

What at first appears to be a normal job for professional burglar Junior Bender leaves him blackmailed into helping a mobster. But what that mobster wants to do is even more surprising – and dangerous.

I found the characters very real, engaging, and enjoyable. Unfortunately, I found the plot uneven and the foul language a bit more than I can tolerate. Then again, this isn’t my normal choice for reading material, so it’s on me. I’m glad I tried it because I was curious about the series, but I won’t read any more.

My first book by this author, and I’ll be back! Delightfully entertaining, but also well-written.