From Cradle to Crime

“Toby Dillon has a sweet gig,” writes James R. Winter today in January Magazine, reviewing Randall Hicks’ new novel, Baby Crimes. “He’s a tennis pro at a San Diego-area country club that affords him an apartment with a view of a swimming pool favored by nudists. To retain his services, the club has converted a storage room into an office, where he can practice law as an adoption attorney. Over his desk is his law degree from UCLA. Look closely, though, and you’ll see that the initials stand for ‘Uncle Charlie’s Law Academy.’” Even without that law school sheepskin, though, Dillon has an investigating attorney’s drive and grit--both on display in Baby Crimes.

The case he’s given in these pages isn’t one he covets: Dot-com millionaire Nevin Handley and his wife, Catherine, want Dillon to make the long-ago, under-the-table adoption of their daughter, Lynn--who happens to be one of Dillon’s tennis students--legal at last, “as though somebody had simply forgotten to file the paperwork.” It looks like a slam-dunk, until Nevin Handley is found dead--suicide or homicide?--in the family’s home gymnasium. Then things start to get complicated, with the widow Handley refusing to let Dillon tell anyone who’s employing him, and protecting the identity of whoever’s been sending threatening notes, insisting that Lynn be told of her adoption; and an attempted coup targeting local waste-management tycoon Julian Toscano.

“Randall Hicks is not writing anything particularly original in these books,” Winter concludes, “but he is nonetheless managing to turn some of the old standbys of P.I. fiction on their ears.” You can read his full review here.