From Publishers Weekly
When a young singer offers him a fee for his services, Groucho Marx, PI, turns her down. "So far we run our detective agency on a completely altruistic basisAsomewhat in the manner of Robin Hood. If you can envision a middle-aged Yiddish Robin Hood... suppose Rueben Hood would be too obvious a name?" As he did in Groucho Marx, Master Detective, veteran mystery and SF writer Goulart has caught the voice and social conscience of his hero to perfection, even if the mystery plot he's involved him in is a tad shopworn. It's 1938, and the name of the radio show that Groucho is starring in and narrator Frank Denby is writing has been changed to please a new sponsor. A leading plastic surgeon and drug supplier to the Hollywood elite is found shot to death; a faded star named Frances London is arrested for the crime; her daughter, a singer on Groucho's show, asks Groucho and Denby to use their real-life detective skills to clear her name. Some top gangsters are involved, as is the crooked Bay City cop who dogged the duo's heels in their first book. The story may be weak, but Groucho's jokes, some fine period details and guests appearances by everyone from Conrad Nagel to Nathanael West help make this a whole lot of fun.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Kirkus Reviews
His heartless producers have renamed Groucho Marx's radio show, dug him up a new sponsorMullens Pudding, which brags about coming in five flavorful flavorsand stuck him with a horrid supporting actress, Polly Pilgrim, who plays his daughter on the air and his scourge everywhere else. Sadly, Polly's cyanide repartee is swiftly humbled when her actress mother Frances London is picked up for killing her recent beau, Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Russell Benninger. Will Groucho and his scriptwriter, ex-crime reporter Frank Denby, buck some threatening local mobsters and the equally corrupt Bayside cops and get Frances out of jail? Can a duck walk? In no time at all, Groucho and Frank establish that Benninger was up to his roving eyes in drugs, that he'd run afoul of some pretty tough characters, and that Groucho is perfectly capable of wising off even at gunpoint. (Frank's girlfriend, cartoonist Jane Danner, is just as witty, and Mullens Maiden Victoria St. John's ramblings add a touch of Dada to the proceedings.) As in Groucho Marx, Master Detective (1998), though, the tired, busy plot seems to have come from a bunch of lower-paid writers than the ones who wrote the dialogue, and Goulart's constant habit of splitting up Groucho and his alleged amanuensis seems like a lazy way to get around the problems of first-person narration. Still, it's refreshing to spend another couple of hours in 1938 Hollywood, where the Third Reich is a distant rumble and the most minor characters, from whores to countermen, identify themselves as actors. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
