Willie La Rue and his cohorts figure that they can rob a bank and disappear into the hoopla and pageantry of Mardi Gras. The indolent Tubby, not known for his altruistic feelings towards anything but food, decides he must save his city from the invaders. However, the criminals know that the gauntlet has been thrown down and Tubby must be eliminated because he can identify each of them.

The fourth book in the "Tubby" series is by far the best of a very good collection. By caring for something besides his palette, Tubby seems more human and even a half decent individual. The forces of nature playing havoc with the city makes New Orleans feel genuine rather than the usual traveler's guide most novels set in the Big Easy seem to mirror. Amazingly, Tony Dunbar has done raised the bar, which he previously set at a very high of quality, on New Orleans mysteries. Though SHELTER FROM THE STORM is the elite of the lot, all the "Tubby" books are highly recommended for their humorous look at New Orleans.

Harriet Klausner

Tubby's view of New Orleans is generally that area that stretches from the French Quarter to Riverbend. Even though it's a decidedly friendlier (read richer, whiter, safer) view of the world than most New Orleanians have, sometimes a deep weariness sets in. Tubby is thinking for many New Orleanians when he reflects on the pervasive trash in the streets, the cops double parked on St. Charles Avenue while attending to personal errands, and the general aversion toward doing an honest day's work. This is truly the city that forgot to care. Tubby, in his mind, was "crossing a bridge and leaving New Orleans behind." (Many have claimed that the best view of the city is the one you see in your rear view mirror, and I am not unsympathetic to that idea.) But Tubby is obviously locked in. No other state has laws like Louisiana; a lawyer can't just get another job somewhere else. But luckily for Tubby, no other place has restaurants like New Orleans. So here's where and what Tubby ate in this book:

Liuzza's - Appetizers were andouille gumbo, 4 shrimp, and 2 oysters each. Tubby had baked garlic oysters; his companion had barbequed shrimp.

Red Fish Grill - sweet potato catfish; andouille meat pie.

State Street Café - a bucket of boiled crabs, shrimp, crawfish, and potatoes.

Upperline Restaurant, JoAnn Clevenger's cheerful yellow cottage with giant Martin LaBorde paintings hanging above the front door. It was mentioned, deservedly so, in an earlier book as well - Appetizers: fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade; spicy shrimp with jalapeno corn bread. Entrees: roast duck, garlic-crusted Gulf fish, veal grillades with mushrooms, peppers, and cheddar grits.

Readers will have noticed that oysters frequently figure prominently in Tubby's meals. In an earlier book, Tubby stopped at a po'boy shop on Magazine Street (probably the one right across the street from the N.O. Academy of Fine Arts, and just a couple of blocks from Beaucoup Books, where Tony Dunbar books are always in stock). Watching the cook prepare his fried oyster sandwich, he "was thinking that oysters were really sort of unappealing when you met one by itself. The moon rock shell might be as big as your hand, and stuck fast to all manner of barnacles and calcified sea life. Grab it firmly and it would likely slice the heck out of your fingers. It took a character with a strong wrist and stout blade to open one, and then what you had was a moist pale creature void of form. Yet he could think of no superlatives adequate to describe the pleasures of consuming one." Now that's writing!

I have some predictions for forthcoming Tubby Dubonnet books: In "Lucky Man," there is a minor character named Frank Daneel. I predict that Tubby will meet him and someone named Greg Soniat for dinner at Gautreau's Restaurant. Clancy's, with its enormous selection of single malt scotches, is due for an appearance. My long shot prediction (because Mr. Dunbar loves to poke some fun) is a mention of the chocolate desert bar in the revolving restaurant atop the Hyatt.

You know who he is borrowing his characters from, you know where he is in the city and you can just feel the weather. There is no other place quite like New Orleans. It is really a seedy old city with it's own characters that would be hard to make up. Dunbar is as affectionate with his great characters as John Kenedy Toole was with Ignatius J. Reilly.

His stories are terrifically entertaining.

"The Crime Czar" is not so much a novel as a continuation of "Shelter From the Storm", Dunbar's fourth Tubby Dubbonet mystery. Dunbar's novels tend to be short and to the point, but in this case, the point was made last time around and there was very little else to say.

In January's "Shelter", Tubby's friend Dan was shot in the chest in the aftermath of a daring bank robbery. After clinging to life for seven months, Dan dies, but not before telling Tubby that he knew his murderer "from the old neighborhood". Tubby decides not to find the killer, but the shadowy man behind the killer, the eponymous "Crime Czar". Inexplicably, Tubby is also tapped to co-chair the election campaign of a local judge.

Unlike the rest of the Dubonnet oeuvre, "The Crime Czar" is short on plot, though it retains the strange New Orleans ambience. Throughout, we feel a sense of underlying decay, in the buildings, in politicians, in Tubby. But lost are the plausible coincidences that guide Tubby down his confused path; instead we are treated to gratuitous and unbelievable turns of character. Gone are the easy transitions from humor to violence; they are replaced by slapstick.

Midway through the book, the shadowy Crime Czar emerges from anonymity to have breakfast with Tubby in a Shoney's. Why? Because Tubby asked him, through an intermediary, to do so. I ask you, if you had as much to lose as this guy, would you just out yourself on the whim of a down and out attorney? Later, when Tubby needs $500,000 seed money to set a trap and can't find anyone to give it to him, a figure from a previous book arrives unannounced with just that amount of money on her.

Don't get me wrong, I wanted to like this book more; so much so that I paid cover price, plus Amazon's $1.85 "special surcharge" and $3.95 shipping. But overall, this is a pleasant way to spend two hours (Dunbar's books are not heavy reading), but unless you are the type of person who gladly suspends disbelief, you will find much to puzzle and confound you here. If you have not read any of the Tubby Dubonnet series, you will thank yourself for reading "Crooked Man", but don't start with "The Crime Czar". This book is a good way for a Dubonnet fan to recapture some of that atmosphere and good will (like a business trip to New Orleans might be), but it is not a good starting place.

They put Tubby Dubonnet in a paperback novel.

Actually, this New Orleans lawyer resided awkwardly within the high-rent confines of a hard-cover series. He spends more time in a bar than at the bar in most of his books, and he handles clients with names like Monster the Mudbug. Communing with low-lifes makes his move to low-rent reading more than reasonable.

As long as he keeps eating in New Orleans restaurants, that is; Dubonnet is always a good bet for a good bite. Sure enough, Tubby takes us to four N'Awlins eateries, and mentions five others. Author Dunbar makes good eating come to life with good writing, treating us to lemon curd on a maple walnut scone at the Daily Grind on Magazine Street, and shrimp scampi at Uglesich's "unpretentious eatery" just past the Clio housing project.

The plot? (You expect a story at these prices?)Well, Tubby believes that a lawyer has to eat, but he doesn't get excited about work-unless he senses injustice. This time he takes after a supposed "crime czar," behind the death of his best drinking buddy. In pursuit of this theory, he runs a scam on the parish sheriff, runs over a hit man, and runs away from a murder scene with a possible suspect.

Needless to say the plot line is thinner than the fishing line Tubby tosses out at the end of the book, after he discovers a crime "committee," not a crime "czar." Of course, he has a videotape back home he hasn't looked at yet....

Hmmm-wonder where we will eat while tracking down THE CRIME COMMITTEE?

Since the shooting, Tubby has been in a state of semi-retirement as he drinks himself to death. This changes for Tubby when he accepts an offer to co-chair the reelection campaign of a judge. He also decides to find the person who killed his buddy and ultimately who is the kingpin controlling criminal activity in New Orleans. His obsession leads Tubby to the underbelly of the city, a place where he meets crooked politicians and graft seeking law enforcement officials, who will have no compulsion to reduce the Big Easy's legal population by one.

The uniqueness and darkness of New Orleans is brought to stunning Technicolor in Tony Dunbar's latest Tubby Dubonet mystery, THE CRIME CZAR. The audience obtains a taste of the city's ambience, allowing them to understand that it's one of the most unique locales in the world. However, the lovable, bewildering, but honorable Tubby remains the focal point of this and the previous novels. Readers will admire his tenacity and reflect on his actions that make him a real hero. This is a great entry in what is a stupendous series.

Harriet Klausner