The Hemingway Thief by Shaun Harris, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Henry "Coop" Cooper is a writer of romance novels featuring Alasdair MacMerlin, a Scottish vampire detective. He writes these novels under the pseudonym of Toulouse Velour. Although these books have made him well-known and quite wealthy, his one desire is to write a really great serious mystery under his own name that will put him up with the celebrated authors of the genre. He has traveled to Baja Beach in Tijuana to relax and think about his next novel. With Grady Doyle, the hotel owner, he lounges on the beach drinking rum and thinking and thinking and thinking. When Grady tries to stop two muggers from almost killing a man, Coop sticks with him, thinking maybe he will get a line on a new story. The drunk is a small time thief who has run to Mexico after stealing from a rare-book dealer a never-before-seen first draft of a novel written by Ernest Hemingway titled A Moveable Feast. This document is more than just a valuable piece of a legendary story, it also reveals clues to a suitcase that was lost in Paris in 1922 that contained a year's worth of stories by Hemingway, America's most famous author. How fortunate for Coop and Grady if they can interpret the clues and find the suitcase, in The Hemingway Thief, the first mystery in this series by Shaun Harris.

Coop and Grady aren't the only ones with a desire to unearth this obscure literary treasure; there are criminals out there who also know of the suitcase and its contents who are actively searching for the unpublished material. These men will do whatever it takes to find it and reap the rewards, which are expected to be vast. What started out as a fun adventure to find a suitcase with an author's lost creations soon becomes an extremely grave mission. For Coop this could become the story he has dreamed about … but he has to live long enough to write it.

The Hemingway Thief is a terrific mystery with lots of laughs. Besides Coop and Grady, there are quite a few characters to deal with, some for only a short period of time as they come on stage to advance the story and then move off, but each one is well-drawn and most are quite approachable. This fast moving, really quite delightful read is highly recommended.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of The Hemingway Thief.

Acknowledgment: Seventh Street Books provided a copy of The Hemingway Thief for this review.

The Hemingway Thief

A Coop Cooper and Grady Doyle Mystery by Shaun Harris