End of the Line-Mike Manno

End of the Line
Mike Manno
Five Star, Jun 16 2010, $25.95
ISBN: 9781594148637

In Dallas County, Special Investigations Unit Detective Sergeant Jerome Stankowski and Deputy Attorney General Parker Noble investigate the murder of disgraced banker Rhett J. Butler; shot to death on a city bus. R.J. as he was called was working insurance claims having been forced to resign from his position as Great Plains State Bank downtown branch president due to $80,000 being missing.

As the pair interviews those who rode the bus, worked with the victim, and his family (first and second wives), Stan meets two women (bank teller Kitty Quinn and Teri Barkley niece of a restaurant owner) who offer to help him with his statistics class. Buffy Cole the reporter who worked with the pair on the Murder Most Holy Case offers to help him on this one too. Stan believes the second wife, cheesecake model Linda and her boyfriend drug counselor Bob Maxwell killed him so she would not be cut out of his estate when they divorced. However, Noble thinks that is too simple as the embezzled money remains missing. Then there is the first wife who hated R.J.

Readers will enjoy the return of Parker and “Cousin Stanley” as they investigate a case that started as bank embezzlement, in which the prime suspect is murdered. Parker is his terrific know it all self starting with the bloodhound hearsay lecture and never lets up with his unique brand of sardonic winking wisdom. Stan is a solid cop who this time has three women in his life, but at the same time none in his life. Ironically Buffy plays a lesser but more pivotal role than in the Murder Most Holy case as she shares second banana billing with a lot of other females. Hopefully this is not the End of the Line for this dynamic trio.

Harriet Klausner