This is one of the wittiest mysteries I have ever read. Great black comedy that hasn't dated at all.

The second of the Moses Wine series of detective novels from Roger L. Simon. If you liked the Big Fix you will also like Wild Turkey. The counter-culture of the 60's/early 70's meets Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. All of the Moses Wine mysteries are worth checking out. They will not disappoint. It is interesting to note that the first Moses Wine mysteries were originally published by Straight Arrow Books which was a subsidiary of Rolling Stone Magazine.

I should start by saying that am a huge fan of Private Investigator fiction and that this was my first Moses Wine novel. Apparently, author Roger L. Simon was trying to update the classic Phillp Marlowe type P.I. story to the hip and strange place that Southern California (especially the criminal underworld) had become by the early 1970s. "The Big Fix" has a very strong sense of place and time, and today reads like a snapshot of that very confused era. However, as a mystery, the plot is fairly pedestrian. Set on the backdrop of a political campaign (though we never meet the candidate himself), one of Wine's ex-girlfriends is murdered shortly after bringing him a case. However, Wine doesn't seem particularly outraged and pursues the case with a curious detachment. Along the way he encounters a cornucopia of early 70s revolutionaries and hippies. Ultimately though, the climax is a disappointment not worthy of the story's buildup.

Simon has all the moves of a classic P.I. writer. Wine is appropriately cynical, hardedged and wise-cracking. What he needs is a truly Marlowe-esque plot to sink his teeth into.

superior private eye mystery with the full trappings of the era