The Man Who Woke Up Dead

Nigel Evans walks into the local police precinct and startles the bored desk sergeant about his part in the bank heist that cleaned out the assets of the city and about a gruesome murder that sends Inspector Maccoddy, the commish, and law enforcement into a tantrum. Oh well, not so much into a tantrum but also into a tailspin.

A well-known police informant who would not last two seconds on the street for ratting on his bank robber friends, Evans survives an attempt and flees for his life. Unknowingly, he unleashes a deadly game of kiss-and-kill into which walks the unorthodox Cory Russini, private dick extraordinaire hired by Evans’s beautiful, enticing, and alluring wife to hand her a divorce.

Never giving up, Tom, Dick, and Harry, on their mysterious boss’s orders, booby-traps Russini’s car by mistake, and he walks smack-dab into an assassination attempt meant for Evans. After getting his behind scorched, this strange and eccentric private dick and the flat-footed Inspector Maccoddy find common cause as the assassination attempt brings them into a personal game of confrontation and suspicion of each other. Now Evans, who goes underground, and his wife file for divorce only to find themselves under siege army-style as the gang, in a daring assault, tries to kill them all. But love also plays a hand in this game of criminal pursuit. Russini develops a raging soul feeling for his beautiful client. And then the bodies start to turn up. Russini begins to suspect an unlikely figure whose cunning and ruthlessness appalls him. One insignificant but strange death intrigues him, and it takes a ghoulish act to smash the Tom, Dick, and Harry gang.

-- Neville Ramdeholl