Below the Line by Howard Michael Gould

Published by Dutton on August 13, 2019

When a crime novelist introduces a new series and the first book is entertaining, a reader might wonder whether the success was a fluke. When the second book is just as good or even better, the series will probably go on the reader’s “gotta get the next one” list. That’s where I put the Charlie Waldo series.

Waldo is back in action in this sequel to Last Looks. Waldo is still struggling to live a minimalistic life that emits no carbons, but his relationship with Lorena Nascimento is forcing a tradeoff: in exchange for good sex, he must occasionally share an Uber with her. Lorena’s private investigation firm is struggling, even with the helpful publicity that Waldo has unwillingly generated. To earn a few bucks, Lorena agrees to help a teenage girl named Stevie locate her missing brother while her parents are on vacation. That task proves to be deceptively easy, but the investigation takes an unexpected turn when Stevie goes missing after her high school teacher (with whom she claims to have slept) is murdered. Waldo gets involved only because Stevie is a suspect and he thinks she might be innocent.

Waldo’s sympathy for Stevie is probably undeserved. Stevie is the teenage drama queen from hell. She taunts men with her flirtatious sexuality and tells so many lies that it is challenging to recognize the occasional truth she might utter. Waldo wants to believe her, a fact that Lorena attributes to Waldo being smitten by the provocative teen.

Having been sent on a wild goose chase by Stevie, Lorena soon finds herself chasing another wild goose when she is hired to prove that a woman’s husband is having an affair. That case also takes an unexpected turn. Naturally, the two odd cases are linked. Waldo and Lorena discover the link by the novel’s midway point, but they still have some detecting to do before they will understand why Lorena was twice hired under false pretenses.

More murders are committed —snotty Stevie generally appearing as the number one suspect — before the novel reaches its climax. The plot also involves designer drugs, a soap opera actress whose career has gone south, and sexting between cousins. Poor Waldo, who is the opposite of the typical macho private eye, is beaten repeatedly, mauled by an expensive dog, and tasered. It’s enough to make Waldo wonder whether he was smart to end his self-imposed exile. Doing justice and getting good sex come at a heavy price, at least in Waldo’s life.

The first novel established Waldo as a broken character who has tried to repair his life by owning no more than one hundred things. That characterization added humor to that continues in the second installment as Waldo frets about (for example) whether the sling for his broken arm should count as a new thing.

Waldo’s quirky character and his vulnerable nature makes him likeable, while his iffy relationship with Loretta illustrates difficulties that are common in relationships. At one point Waldo realizes he had “taken the depth of her investment for granted, luxuriating in his own doubts without a thought that all this time she had been harboring her own.” He understands that he isn’t the man Loretta expected him to be, but by the end, he wonders whether Loretta is the woman he wants her to be.

Below the Line blends humor and light drama in a smart plot with quirky but realistic characters. Waldo’s agreement to help a drug dealer’s daughter with a school assignment illustrates just how strange his good-hearted life has become, but that’s the kind of scene that makes me look forward to reading the next chapter of his life.

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