Drink the Tea by Thomas Kaufman, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Washington DC private investigator Willis Gidney searches for a buddy's 25-year-old daughter — a girl he never knew existed until a few days ago — in Drink the Tea, the first mystery in this series by Thomas Kaufman and winner of the 2008 PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest.

The buddy is Steps Jackson, who plays sax in a local jazz band, and the girl's name is Bobbie. Her mother may have been a former girlfriend of Steps, first name Colette, last name and current location unknown; and the last known reference to Bobbie is from a high school classmate. Not much to go on. Still, Gidney starts his inquiry and shortly after finding Colette and speaking to her, she's murdered, Gidney arrested for the crime. Released on bail by Colette's husband, who hires him to find the real killer, Gidney then finds himself pursued by a couple of thugs determined to interfere with his investigation — permanently. Gidney teams up with Lilly, a computer programmer and internet whiz, and together they uncover a number of seemingly random facts related to the case, but none of which seem to help them in finding Bobbie.

Drink the Tea is a very good mystery, but first and foremost, at least in this initial book in the series, it's about introducing Willis Gidney — which isn't even his real name. Refusing to give his name to the authorities when he's arrested as a youth, they assign him the last names of the two cops that brought him in. There are lengthy passages on Gidney's time spent in a "residential youth center", his criminal activities as a pre-teen, and of the foster home of a D.C. detective in which he lived for an extended period. As an adult, Gidney is brazenly self-confident, an honorable cad (if that's not too much of an oxymoron). For example, unable to find a parking spot near a government building, he lifts a police placard from a nearby parked cruiser for his own car. Here's a passage on what happens next.

I returned to the Capitol Hill police lot in time to see a D.C. tow truck remove the unmarked police cruiser from which I had removed the cardboard POLICE slip. I really had intended to return it, but now it might raise a few eyebrows if I did. Oh well. I could make much better use of the POLICE slip than they could.

Much of the appeal of this book depends on whether one takes to the character of Willis Gidney.

As for the plot, strip away all the personal backstories and there's not much left. Which is a little disappointing, because it's a first rate, multi-faceted mystery with all sorts of interconnecting threads that will challenge readers to untangle. At one point Lilly says, "We start with a right-wing ideologue, then a multinational conglomerate, and now we're, like, on to hemp and the EPA. I hope you don't mind me asking, but a girl gets a little curious."

While getting to know Willis Gidney is important, much of the historical context that is presented could have been spread over several books, leaving a little more time here to spend with him on what is quite a clever investigative journey.

Acknowledgment: Minotaur Books provided a copy of Drink the Tea for this review.

Steal the Show
Minotaur Books (Hardcover), July 2011
ISBN-13: 9780312546328; ISBN-10: 0312546327

Drink the Tea

A Willis Gidney Mystery by Thomas Kaufman