The Procane Chronicle

A bungled hand-off lands St. Ives in jail on suspicion of murder.

It's three in the morning, and Philip St. Ives has come to the all-night Laundromat to meet a thief. His laundry bag isn't carrying dirty clothing - it's stuffed with §90,000 cash. But he finds his contact, Bobby Boykins, in no state to talk. Bobby has been beaten, strangled, and stuffed behind a washing machine; Philip is inspecting the corpse when the police find him. Standing in a Laundromat with a dead body and a sack full of cash, Philip learns, is a good way to get arrested.

St. Ives is a go-between - a mediator between thieves and their victims - and he came to meet Bobby for the sake of a rich man who has lost his diary. If Philip can escape the Tenth Precinct, Bobby's killer will come for him next.

Review quote.

"Ross Thomas is without peer in American suspense." - Los Angeles Times.

"What Elmore Leonard does for crime in the streets, Ross Thomas does for crime in the suites." - The Village Voice.

"Ross Thomas is that rare phenomenon, a writer of suspense whose novels can be read with pleasure more than once." - Eric Ambler, author of The Mask of Dimitrios.

Biographical note.

The winner of the inaugural Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award, Ross Thomas (1926-1995) was a prolific author whose political thrillers drew praise for their blend of wit and suspense. Born in Oklahoma City, Thomas grew up during the Great Depression, and served in the Philippines during World War II. After the war, he worked as a foreign correspondent, public relations official, and political strategist before publishing his first novel, "The Cold War Swap" (1967), based on his experience working in Bonn, Germany. The novel was a hit, winning Thomas as an Edgar Award for Best First Novel and establishing the characters Mac McCorkle and Mike Padillo.

Thomas followed it up with three more novels about McCorkle and Padillo, the last of which was published in 1990. He wrote nearly a book a year for twenty-five years, occasionally under the pen name Oliver Bleeck, and won the Edgar Award for Best Novel with "Briarpatch" (1984). Thomas died of lung cancer in California in 1995, a year after publishing his final novel, "Ah, Treachery!"