Benjamin M. Schutz

Five stars is insufficient praise for this mystery thriller from Benjamin
Schutz. Leo Haggerty is the star of Schutz' six-book mystery series, a
private eye in the D.C. area, running a respectable agency, not some
down-on-his-luck has-been. This is an underrated series and deserves
far more attention and acclaim than it has gotten. It's unfortunate
Schutz didn't see fit to give us more money of these.

This is primarily a straight-ahead thriller with Haggerty on the run
from a psychopathic killer who has invaded his world in a rather
unforgettable fashion and ripped Haggerty's life to bits. As the reader,
it was a very easy to be drawn in and get emotionally swept up in the
horror of what's done to Haggerty and the people around him. Much of
the story is a sort of cat and mouse game of whether Haggerty can
figure out what's going on before the psychopath gets what he wants
from Haggerty.

The story is populated with bail bondsmen, Neo-Nazi skinheads, and
computer geeks.
Hard to put down -
… (more)

You can't read the title from this book without hearing in your head the hit tune by 10cc. This is volume four of the Leo Haggerty series that takes place in and around Washington DC. Like George Pelecanno's work, schutz' detective stories give us a taste for the DC that isn't all wrapped around politicians, lobbyists, and the halls of power.

Here, Haggerty takes on a job of body-guarding a budding rock princess whose punkish nihilistic lyrics attracted a cult following and threatening letters. In the midst of his professionally guarding her, Haggerty has to figure out if anyone has a motive including the feuding band members and the sleazy manager.

I found the writing to be crisp, easy-to-read, and quite a bit of fun. It's not constant bang-bang shoot-em-up action, but it's a great story and the characters really come alive.… (more)

There are six novels in Schutz's Leo Haggerty PI series, published in
the 80's and 90's. As luck would have it, I began with the final book in
the series. Nevertheless, Mexico is Forever turned out to be an
excellent book. Can't wait to dig into the rest of this series.
This novel starts out a bit slow in the action category, but that's only
because Schutz deliberately paced this book, building up to a top-
notch climax. In any case, it starts out as a lawyer's investigator starts going through public records to determine if a suddenly-materialized
heiress is legitimate or a phoney. And, this routine investigation takes
Haggerty down the rabbit hole into a world of porn stars, drug busts,
and wicked conspiracies, resulting in deadly action.

Schutz gives us a private eye story and a lot of the motifs from classic
fifties private eye stories like the porn star on the run, the investigator
that just wants to protect her, and a host of bad guys who will stop at
nothing. But what's really great here is that Schutz doesn't try to
rehash or copy old style pulp, but gives us readers an excellent
modern-day detective story.
Really made for a great, compelling read and I highly recommend it.… (more)