The Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak Mysteries
2 primary works
Book 1
Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell's Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed—until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary. There's only one way for Bingo and Handsome to muscle in on that half-million-dollar claim: Kidnap Pigeon and blackmail his coconspirator. Unfortunately, their foolproof plan comes with mobsters, a dodgy chorus girl, multiple murders, a refrigerated corpse, and the strange Mr. Pigeon himself, who, it seems, likes being a hostage. In fact, he has no intention of escaping. It's the surest way to protect his own secret—which could be Bingo and Handsome's biggest threat. The first mystery writer ever to make the cover of Time magazine, Craig Rice is a "composite of Agatha Christie's ingenuity, Dashiell Hammett's speed, and Dorothy Sayers's wit" (Louis Untermeyer, Gold Medal Award-winning poet). The Sunday Pigeon Murders is the 1st book in the Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Book 2
Former con-artist photographers Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak are en route from the grit of New York City to the glitter of Sunset Boulevard when their dreams are waylaid in a tragic roadside accident with an errant turkey. But getting stuck in the off-the-map community of Thursday County, Iowa, has an upside: a blushing farmer's daughter with a promising sob story. To help her ailing grandma, the Halvorsen family turkey farm is up for grabs. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, Bingo and Handsome plan to make a bundle off the gobbling herd. But these two city slickers should've known that small towns hide big secrets—and Thursday's secrets go back more than a decade. Before long, Bingo and Handsome get tangled up in a bank robbery, face off with an escaped convict, follow the trail of a buried fortune, are wrangled into a fowl conspiracy, and come to a dead end when they become suspects in a murder. As turkey day nears, it could very well be their heads on the chopping block. This Bingo and Handsome mystery is "a devastating satire . . . [an] immensely complex cat's cradle of the plot" (Barry Ergang, Derringer Award-winning author). The Thursday Turkey Murders is the 2nd book in the Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.